SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND “LEGACY LANDSCAPES”

Abstract

This piece pays tribute to a great scholar and urbanist, Sir Peter Hall, who was concerned with the social and economic vitality of neighborhoods. In his 1988 book, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, Hall writes about the Garden City, exploring both the original vision as imagined by Ebenezer Howard and the global di- aspora of Howard’s ideas. Hall also discusses the theoretical contribution of Garden Cities today, especially with regard to issues of social equity and so- cial sustainability. This piece critically re-examines the Garden City concept, including its utopian social origins, its implementation on a global scale, and its impact on current planning theory and practice. I illustrate how Hall and others have affected the canonical garden cities literature, and have created a “legacy landscape” concept that is still relevant today in new sustainable development.