Book Review: Sociable cities: the legacy of Ebenezer Howard

This book celebrates the centenary year of the UK’s Town and Country Planning Association, established in 1899 with Ebenezer Howard as a founding member. Its two aims are to recount the story of the first century of Howard’s movement and to consider the continuing relevance of his ideas to the creation of sustainable new communities in the twenty-first century. The organization of the book into two parts, ‘The first century’ and ‘The coming century’, reflects these aims. The first part of the book covers familiar ground in the sense that many volumes have been written both on the major players in the development of town and country planning in Britain, such as Howard, Osborn and Abercrombie, and on the key concepts, such as garden cities, green belts and new towns. The achievements of the text here are to condense complex histories, circumstances and ideas into a succinct and legible summary. Strong strands emerge on both the characters and the concepts, which hold together and illuminate an important and influential story. The biographical details on Howard, Osborn and the others are of great interest and relevance, as are the accounts of the ways in which they worked to pursue the causes in which they had such commitment and belief. At times there is the sense that what we read has been written by committed admirers of the key figures. The first clue to this is Figure 1, where the face of Ebenezer Howard is said to display ‘passion and determination’ when the image could easily be interpreted as sadness and resignation. There are many clear insights and a welcome tendency to order the key factors in a rational and comprehensive way. The links through from garden cities to new towns, the variants in European applications (or not) of the concept and the measures of success are all well argued. The chapter on plotlands opened up a theme that perhaps deserves more attention in its own right. The second part of the book broadens the terms of reference considerably, and the Town and Country Planning Association’s own basic principles on future development provide the main unifying theme. These principles are stated on p. 115, with the premise that ‘all decisions to develop land should be based on a common and agreed framework of environmental considerations’. They are followed by the recognition of basic constraints that include the continuing dominance of private cars, lack of significant financial inputs and ongoing decentralization. The major challenges are stated on p. 171, and cover sustainability, infrastructure, structures and affordable housing. Without doubt, the ideas originating with Howard, Osborn and the others carry through and have continu354 Book reviews