Letchworth Garden City

The "world's first garden city" - a planned community founded in 1903, but incorporating three ancient villages (Norton, Willian and Letchworth). Home of the first "green belt", the UK's first traffic roundabout (second or third in the world), the first place to have planned and separate industrial, residential and shopping areas) though the shops were a bit of an afterthought). The idea that homes should automatically have front and back gardens started here. If your house was built between about 1920 and 1960 (or even later) its very design was probably influenced by what had been tried first in Letchworth. Grass verges separating people on the pavement from the traffic on the roads were a Letchworth idea. And so on. And on.

Inspired everything from the New Town movement to the design of Canberra in Australia (though Ebenezer Howard, whose idea it all was, would have said that these were too big - 30,000 was his target population). The town was actually designed to be self-supporting - it generated its own electricity and gas (and even exported both to other towns before WW2), has its own water supply, and the green belt was designed to be big enough to feed the town - as such therefore it was 100 years ahead of it time. It is no longer self-sustaining, but that is more the result of governmental action rather than the failure of the plan - Letchworth never had a power cut until the day after its power stations were nationalised!

The town was also designed to with the aim of common land ownership. Again this couldn’t survive the modern world and when most leases came up for renewal after 70-100 years they had to be sold.

However, most commercial and farming land is still owned by what is now the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, a unique body with pretty unique powers in areas such as planning, for example. Somewhat controversial at times it does plough all its profits (quite considerable ones these days) back into the town, which boasts - as a direct result - two swimming pools and a huge paddling pool, an independent multi-screen cinema, a hospice, day centres, two small theatres/public halls, more clubs and societies on more subjects than its possible to imagine, a sports club for every sport (including women's sport), and religious groups of pretty much every kind and type. It is also - as one might expect - a very green and attractive town. In fact the story is that the construction of the entire original town required the felling of only one tree...

Today it is arguably an average sort of town at first glance - part of the London commuter belt (though originally it was built 30 miles out because that would be too far to commute!) with a population now slightly over Howard's target (its around 33,000). Getting a bit sad in the 1980s the town centre is beginning to recover and contains a range of shops and outlets that are well worth visiting (David's bookshop, Tom Westrop's delicatessen, etc.) though it still has a battle with out of town shopping centres, as well as Stevenage - the Big Brother, and (of course) the first New Town. But deep down its still special and the object of interest from town planners worldwide.