ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the transformation in house and environment provided by the garden city movement, and deals both with the considerations that lay behind it and with the innovations in residential design that followed. The basic difference between garden city layouts and those of standard speculative housing was density. In place of the high densities and 'pocket-handkerchief' gardens of speculative development, the garden city movement adopted low densities and large gardens. In view of the garden city movement's reliance on these societies for low-cost housing, it is important to note that the cost of this form of ownership was, nonetheless, beyond the means of the majority of the population. What the improved type of house might be in practice was demonstrated by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in the first cottages at New Earswick. In the Unwin argued for a type of cottage which in its design and planning entirely rejected the legacy of the speculative builder.
