Working Paper #622
Garden City Suburbs
Robert A.M. Stern
Architecture Development Urban
The author urges today’s town planners to reconnect to the grand, yet undervalued, 150-year-old tradition of the garden city suburb as he addresses the revitalization of declining inner-city neighborhoods, rather than concentrating on greenfield developments on the periphery. These comprehensively planned green residential districts were the product of developers and architects working to provide for both the material and the social needs of many classes of people. They provided both single-family and multi-family housing, sometimes within a city or sometimes a short distance away, but always transit-oriented. The garden city suburb tradition, deeply engaged in development economics, social issues, and civic reform, holds many lessons for reinventing cities in our time.