Hampstead Garden Suburb, described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as 'the most nearly perfect example of the unique English invention the Garden Suburb', celebrates its centenary in 2007. Founded by Dame Henrietta Barnett, after a long campaign to protect the open land north of Hampstead Heath from indiscriminate development, the Suburb was planned by Raymond Unwin, with Edwin Lutyens responsible for the Central Square with its twin churches and institute. Unwin, with his partner Barry Parker, had recently planned Letchworth, the first garden city, while Lutyens, after a decade of designing country houses, was anxious to participate in the 'high game' of classical architecture and civic design. The built environment of the Suburb encapsulates a unique blend of Arts and Crafts informality and meticulously detailed Queen Anne and Georgian style.

The Garden City Movement provided a radical new model for the design and layout of housing at the turn of the nineteenth century and set standards for the twentieth century which were of international significance. The vision of the movement's founder, Ebenezer Howard, drew on many strands of political and utopian thought, and initially aimed at addressing the problems of an increasingly urban and dysfunctional society along 'the peaceful path to real reform'. It took only five years, from 1898 to 1903 for the idea to take root in the open fields of North Hertfordshire, when Earl Grey proclaimed the Letchworth Garden City Estate open. Letchworth was followed by Hampstead Garden Suburb, Welwyn Garden City and numerous smaller developments, and Garden City ideas informed both inter-war housing policy and New Town planning after the Second World War. Present-day issues such as sustainable development and eco-settlements have their roots in the Garden City. Written by the leading authority in the field, this book tells the story of a major development in England's urban and planning history and provides a timely popular survey of the achievements of the Garden City Movement and the challenge of change. This will not only appeal to planners and conservation professionals, but also residents of the garden cities.

First published in 1909, Raymond Unwin's Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs is an extraordinary compendium of images and theories on urban design. As a member of the generation of planners following Camillo Sitte and preceding the emergence of the modern planners of the 1920s, Unwin considered planning a design-based discipline rather than a purely technical one. He believed that artistic and practical criteria were mutually supportive and carried this out in his work by creating plans that represented a unity of art, science, and technology. Unwin is perhaps the greatest figure of the Garden City movement, which has had a tremendous impact on planning in both Europe and the United States. Although Town Planning has become the bible of neo-traditionalist planners, this book is not a nostalgic view of past planning ideas; rather, it is a useful, forward-looking book that holds valuable lessons for today's planners. Its insightful critical analyses of many towns throughout Europe and the United States are accompanied by photographs, plans, drawings, and six foldout maps. This reprint of Town Planning in Practice includes a new preface by Andres Duany and an introduction by Walter Creese.

The feminist social reformer Henrietta Barnett (1851-1936) is best known as the moving spirit behind the creation of London's Hampstead Garden Suburb. Yet, as Micky Watkins shows in this lively biography, the Suburb was only the final achievement of a long and varied career of social engagement, much of it spent among the worst slums of London's East End. Octavia Hill, John Ruskin, Walter Crane, Beatrice Webb, Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Spencer, as well as innumerable East Enders - often riotously immune to attempts at their 'improvement' - people this vivid account.A woman of immense energy, Henrietta's role in both Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Art Gallery was central to their foundation and continued success, and she spent the latter half of her life in realising her dream project of building Hampstead Garden Suburb.Henrietta's work in town planning won the admiration of the American feminist Jane Addams, and in the USA she was feted by Henry Ford, Dale Carnegie and John Rockefeller. Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources, Micky Watkins traces Henrietta's ground-breaking achievement in building in North London the utopian Hampstead Garden Suburb to house all classes and conditions of people, as an antidote to the East End slums. Her Suburb has influenced town planning all over the world.