ABSTRACT
Ward During the late 1980s and early 1990s a remarkable phenomenon has begun to emerge in planning circles in several parts of the West: the rediscovery and re-examination of the garden city idea. Despite the prevailing thrusts of Western politics in the 1980s away from collectivist solutions and government planning towards the market-led regeneration of existing urban concentrations, the garden city has crept back onto the planning agenda. In Britain there has been an extraordinary surge of interest from private housebuilders, together with a spate of conferences, professional and propagandist reports and official pronouncements. And, as if to emphasize the seriousness of all these moves, they have even been brilUantly evoked and satirized by the distinguished and popular novelist, John Mortimer (1990). However the scale of this British revival in the garden city/new community movement is unique. In no other country has it achieved the momentum it has in Britain, though we can point to some similar signs in other parts of Europe and elsewhere.
