Re-Imagining the Garden City

This international design ideas competition aims to discover new designs for a modern garden city to meet the needs of the 21st century, whilst recapturing the pioneering spirit that led to the development of the world’s first garden city at Letchworth.

The competition is seeking master planning concepts for the proposed residential development of a 45 Hectare site to the north of Letchworth, which will be the first expansion of the Garden City in a generation.

The design competition is being managed by RIBA Competitions on behalf of the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation (the Foundation) in partnership with the Town and Country Planning Association, Homes England, Anglian/Affinity Water, Building Research Establishment and the University of Hertfordshire.

Letchworth Garden City was the brainchild of Ebenezer Howard, a social reformer who sought to address issues of deprivation, squalid living conditions and the inequity of high rents, by reforming land ownership and combining the best of living and working in the town and country, through a series of planned settlements, known as Garden Cities. Howard’s principles, set out in his 1898 publication, ‘To–Morrow a Peaceful Path to Real Reform’ , sought a social, community and economic model, where value is captured from land and reinvested back into the local community. This included detailed funding and expenditure projections, community governance and stewardship.

The full brief can be viewed at ribacompetitions.com/letchworthgardencity