Key Movements of Urban Planning; Green City Movement

Garden City Movement

Sir Ebenzer Howard

Founder

Garden City Movement is an urban planning technique which is first founded in 1898 by Sir Ebenzer Howard in United Kingdom.

His idea of the movement was to allow people and nature to live in harmony.

Basically, Sir Ebenzer Howard dreamt of creating a utopian city that

• ·         involves people living, growing, breathing in the fresh air, in the gifts of Nature
• ·         solves the problem of overcrowding and dirty city
• ·         to combine the elements of urbanization and rural areas
• ·         neither too large to deprive it of country character nor too small to erase the presence of social intercourse

The Three Magnets illustration of the relationship between: Town, Country and Town-Country

Early Influences

"Air and space, wood and water, schools and churches, shrubberies and gardens, around pretty self contained cottages in a group neither too large to deprive it of country character, nor too small to diminish the probabilities of social intercourse." (Edinburgh Magazine. Dec. 1848.)

 

Satellite Town 

Singapore was formerly known as a "Garden City", recently changed her title to "City in a Garden", is a vision set by the NParks for Singapore. As her title suggested, it must somehow be related to the Green City Movement, the whole city is designed and planned according to the style. To my surprise, URA came up with a new concept called the Satellite Town. It was an adaption of the "Ring Concept Plan" where facilities stand and surround a body of water with greenbelts tucked in between.

Queenstown was named in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953

"The concept of a satellite town began with the conceptualization of The Concept Plan of 1971 by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It adopted the “Ring Concept Plan”, which “envisaged the development of a ring of new high-density satellite towns around the central water catchment area, with each town separated by green spaces and a system of parks and open spaces.” Low- and medium-density private housing would be built beside these towns and there would be provisions for industrial estates.”

 - See more at: http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/ask/singapore/2484#sthash.y0c0bZR9.dpuf

Queenstown was the very first Satellite Town to be established in Singapore, then later on Ang Mo Kio..
What these estates have in common is that they have all the necessities within the estate itself: cultural facilities, town council, residential, education etc.

So it's a planning-ception! Satellite Town within a Green City.

http://www.singaporecitygallery.sg/images/wmQueenstown-Book.pdf

Now Green Cities doesn't only mean to have pockets of green in the planning, but also to be eco-friendly and sustainable.



http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/c18131177l7l8x30/
http://www.rickmansworthherts.freeserve.co.uk/howard1.htm#sna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement
http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/howard.htm
http://www.es.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lep/thesis/98D_murakami-e.html
http://www.celsias.co.nz/article/what-do-new-zealands-futurologists-think-our-citie/
http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/ask/singapore/2484
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement