Ebenezer Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, and the building of the first garden city, Letchworth Garden City, commenced in 1903. The second true Garden City was Welwyn Garden City (1920) and the movement influenced the development of several model suburbs in other countries, such as Forest Hills Gardens designed by F. L. Olmsted Jr. in 1909, Radburn, New Jersey (1923), Pinelands, Cape Town, and the four Suburban Resettlement Program towns of the 1930s, Greenbelt, Maryland, Greenhills, Ohio, Greenbrook, New Jersey, and Greendale, Wisconsin. Howard aimed to reduce the alienation of humans and society from nature, and hence advocated garden cities and Georgism. Howard is believed by many to be one of the great guides to the town planning movement, with many of his garden city principles being used in modern town planning.