I will start with a quote from a book of Charles Benjamin Purdom, written in 1963 - the Letchworth achievement:
"The great advantage of the ownership by a community of its land - not simply the land but its equipment with services - is that it is a means of equilibrium. Economic balance is the surest guarantee of stability in a society, and the point of such balance is its own land. This cannot equally be given if the land is centrally owned: ownership must be local, the owner must be here at home, if the balance is to be maintained. It is more important that a city should own the site on which it lives than anything else that can happen to it: it is its greatest good, for its value is not only economic but psychological. The city is given roots and can flourish."
Charles was involved in the first "Garden City" development, Letchworth in the north of London in the UK which was the brainchild of Ebenezer Howard, described in his book "To-morrow : a peaceful path to real reform" from 1898.
Ebenezer himself traveled in his 20' to the US and picked then quickly, when returning to the UK, up the ideas of Henry George who wrote in 1879 "Progress and Poverty", which according to Wikipedia "sold several million copies, exceeding all other books except the Bible during the 1890s".
This book had an enormous impact on people because they could now understand why land prices are rising in cities and how this is connected to increasing poverty.
Ebenezer then showed in his book how citizens, when they team up for their common interest, could not only use the inevitably uplift in land values for paying the cities infrastructure, but also were able to pay an old age pension out of this economic model to all of their citizens.
So it is worth in my view to look into this concept again as we can learn a lot from this experiment.
What are your thoughts ?
I live very close to Letchworth and it's a lovely place. I think citizens should have more say in what goes on where they live to keep it a good place to be. I know Letchworth had hardly any pubs until recently. Ironic that it was used for much of the pub crawl in The World's End movie.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, in the early years of Letchworth the residents voted against a public house with alcohol licence ..
Very good story brother
thank you :-)
how's the news sir? what time is it?
here is now 7.36pm and you ?
we are still early in the morning pack, at 1.38 in the morning. What is your job?
I am self employed and work with brightforest.co.uk and gardencities.org.uk
Oo, you are a writer yes sir?
ahh, you have to go to sleep !
I again watch the ball game pack. hehe
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