Ebenezer Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard OBE (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 NJ (1923), Pinelands, Cape Town and the 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.

Howard was born in Fore Street, City of London, the son of Ebenezer Howard (1817–1900), a baker, and Ann (née Tow, 1816–1900). He was sent to schools in Suffolk and Hertfordshire. Howard left school at 15 and began working as a stenographer in London. Howard subsequently had several clerical jobs, including one with Dr. Parker of the City Temple.

In 1871, at the age of 21, influenced partly by a farming uncle, Howard emigrated with two friends to America. He went to Nebraska and, after his farming efforts failed, discovered he did not wish to be a farmer. He then relocated to Chicago and worked as a reporter for the courts and newspapers. Howard arrived in Chicago just after the great fire of 1871, which destroyed most of the central business district, and witnessed the regeneration of the city and the growth of its suburbs. In the US, he became acquainted with, and admired, poets Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Howard began to ponder ways to improve their quality of life.

By 1876, he was back in England, where he found a job with Hansard company, which produces the official verbatim record of Parliament, and he spent the rest of his life in this occupation. Howard's time in parliament exposed him to ideas about social reform and helped inspire his ideas for Garden City. In August 1879, he married Eliza Ann Bills. Howard was described[by whom?] as a humble and practical inventor who used his spare time to create outlines of new cities. It was the social milieu of the 1800s which led Howard to consider the social problems of the time and try to find alternatives. Howard mingled with free thinkers, anarchists, and socialists, whose revolutionary and reforming ideas greatly influenced him.

Howard's parents died on consecutive days in 1900, after he had published the first edition of his book, but before work had started on the first garden city: his mother died on 23 November 1900 from pneumonia, and his father died on 24 November 1900 from gastritis.

Howard's wife, Eliza Ann Bills (1853–1904), died in November 1904, shortly after work on the first garden city at Letchworth had begun. Howard married again in 1907 to Edith Annie Hayward (1864–1941), who became Edith, Lady Howard when Howard was knighted in 1927, and with whom he is buried in Letchworth Cemetery.

Howard read widely, including Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, and Henry George's economic treatise, Progress, and Poverty, and thought much about social issues. He disliked the way modern cities were being developed and thought people should live in places that should combine the best aspects of both cities and the countryside.