58 
satellite cities in order to relieve urban congestion. Four centuries 
later, Ebenezer Howard, an uneducated court stenographer, proposed 
a similar solution for relief from London’s urban growth and initiated 
the modern new town concept.’ 
Early notions of modern planning originated with social theorists 
and utopian planners who were essentially reacting to the effects 
wrought by industrialization on the cities.*'The rapid change from 
agrarian to urban living, resulted in crushing population influxes 
which so pressurized existing urban infrastructures that government, 
which had previously operated at a relatively relaxed pace and primi- 
tive level, was unable to provide basic urban services. Perhaps more 
significantly, government was legally and politically unprepared to 
control urban growth patterns.’ | , 
These conditions suggested that something more than “natural 
forces’? was needed to shape future urban growth. The accompanying 
notion was that city planning in an industrial age required far more 
than planning for grand boulevards and vistas and that urban develop- 
ment patterns must be shaped by planning for human values. The 
new town concept emerged from these notions. 
Social theorists and planners had recognized the effects of industrial- 
ization, but Howard was the first to order the components of the city 
into a coherent form and formulate a complete strategy for alternative 
development—the garden city. Suggesting that relief from crowded 
and unsanitary urban conditions might, be had through decentrali- 
zation,* Howard proposed that London be surrounded with a series 
of self-contained urban centers of 30,000 population each. These 
carefully planned communities, protected from external encroachment 
and internal growth by surrounding greenbelts, were to combine the 
virtues of intense urban living with those of the more rural life style. 
The garden city concept was imported and introduced to this 
country by Clarence Stem during the 1920’s and 1930’s.5 Although 
far short of the isolated, self-sufficient English garden city, Stein 
planned several residential developments, including Radburn, N.J., 
one of the more significant contributions to the development. of 
modern planning. Combining concepts of Howard’s comprehensive 
roposals with the neighborhood concept delineated by Clarence 
erry,’ Radburn reflected Stein’s belief that the typical suburban 
environment lacked both essential amenities and the feeling of 
community. 
Stein reasoned that limited dividend corporations or government 
agencies could provide a framework for the heavy financial investments 
and flexible continued planning that would be necessary for such 
development. He further argued for positive governmental inter- 
vention into the field of urban development. His principal efforts were 
directed toward the creation of governmental, legal, and financial 
frameworks that could address the task of new community develop- 
ment as a continuing long-term process rather than a methodical 
1%. Howard, Tomorrow: ‘‘A Peaceful Path to Real Reform” i fe iti 
of Tomonow" ak orm” (1898), later published as ‘‘Garden Cities 
or illustrations and analysis of utopian and conceptual new town pr i sf 
of the Ideal Community in Urban Planning” (1962). e Bronosalsy se] ey ater diee ae 
2 A. Gallion, “The Urban Pattern” (1962). 
4. Howard, op. cit. 
5 C. Stein, ‘““Toward New Towns for America’’ (1951). 
6 A. Gallion, op. cit. 
