[I am fascinated by Man’s attempts to recreate Paradise, i.e. invent a place where things are idyllic or perfect. There are zillions of them … Biosphere, Gaviotas, Oneida, Intervale, Findhorn, Jonestown, Fruitland … none of them really succeed. And it always seems that if you peel away enough layers of the onion, you find a leader who wants to be sexually privileged with the young women. Same story, oft told. Not the case here in The Jungle, however. Well, on second thought … maybe it is! SB SM]
Welwyn Garden City: The British city built by a cult that George Orwell despised
Tue 2 June 2026
In England and much of the world, places are built in the same way. Small villages grow into towns, industry develops, housing estates pop up, roads push further outwards from the centre, and over time, they grow into cities.
However, around 20 miles north of London sits a town that was formed totally differently. This wasn’t organic at all, but a planned experiment based around how people ought to live. Now, over 100 years old, this unique place, home to over 50,000 people, is an example of cultural planning in the United Kingdom during the early 20th century. This is the curious story of Welwyn Garden City, the real-life embodiment of social theory and a utopian ideal.
Garden cities were an urban planning concept designed to capture the best of both countryside and city, by balancing the economic opportunities of a town and the fresh air and open spaces seen in the country. The pioneer, Ebenezer Howard, saw this as a direct reaction to the squalor and pollution that had developed in Victorian London. He laid out his ideas in 1898’s To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, and spoke of the importance of both town and country co-existing.
By creating self-contained communities that had low-density housing and a planet of green spaces, it would create happier and healthier people. The homes would be set apart from the industry of the town, with factories and workplaces nearby, but not on top of housing. Amenities and shops would be integrated into the design, and the entire garden city would be surrounded by protected countryside. He envisioned that by controlling the growth of the town, it would stop it from becoming an endless urban sprawl, like many other cities and towns after industrialisation.
Howard’s first attempt was Letchworth Garden City in 1903, and then, in 1920, Welwyn Garden City was founded. He had hoped that not only would he improve residents’ lives in terms of health and happiness, but also that a cooperative economic model would affect social change and create a fairer society.
Seen as an improvement and an opportunity to fix errors made at Letchworth, this was Howard’s bold gamble. Wide boulevards, lined with lush grass and trees, not only created order but also added tranquillity, and managed to improve the standard of people’s lives. Building such an idealistic community in the UK, let alone so close to London, drew some criticism, including from George Orwell, who had lived in Letchworth himself and was deeply suspicious of middle-class reform movements, which he saw as alienating the working-class.
The garden city movement wasn’t a cult in the traditional sense, but it attracted a broad church of progressives, from spiritualists to reformers, and people with alternative lifestyles, with teetotalism and vegetarianism, both rare at the time, being popular. In The Road to Wigan Pier, we saw Orwell mocking the “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac”, the very sort of idealist that the movement attracted. Orwell felt that the likes of Howard weren’t interested in reshaping ordinary people’s lives, but instead disconnected the middle-class from ordinary life.
Howard believed that with thoughtful planning, Britain could help create towns that enriched the lives of their residents, therefore creating both better citizens and healthier communities. To Orwell, that was foolish and naïve idealism, and he disliked the movement. The truth, as it often is, is probably somewhere in between. Howard had good intentions and did create somewhere that helped raise the standard of life for its residents. Even today, over a century on, the idea of wide streets, green spaces and people-first planning is one which is lauded, and rightly so.
Some of the ideals that Howard proposed were taken up by the British New Towns movement in the aftermath of the Second World War, with green urbanism accepted as a real benefit to both community and wider health. However, the idea of social reform and a cooperative future is one which largely failed, perhaps unrealistic, and certainly not helped by WWII and the United Kingdom’s subsequent economic decline.
Welwyn Garden City sits in an unusual historical position; it was a social experiment that its founder hoped would build a better society. While this utopia was never realised, some of the principles that it was built on have taken root and informed urban planning in the following century.
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