Howard, Ebenezer (1850–1928)

English town planner. Aiming to halt the unregulated growth of industrial cities, he pioneered the ideal of the garden city through his book Tomorrow (1898; republished as Garden Cities of Tomorrow in 1902). He also inspired and took an active part in building the garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn.

His ideas were influenced by the US writers Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in particular by the Utopian novel Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy (1850–1898). Every house was to have its own plot of land; land usage was to be arranged zonally with civic amenities at the centre and factories on the edge of the city; and the whole city was to be surrounded by a ‘green belt’.

Born in London, Howard started life as a junior clerk, emigrated to the USA in 1870, returned in 1874, and for the rest of his life was a shorthand reporter. Tomorrow led to the formation of the Garden City Association (now the Town and Country Planning Association), of similar societies in other countries, and later of the International Garden City Association (now the International Federation for Housing and Planning), of which he was the first president. He was knighted in 1927, and died at Welwyn Garden City.