Ebenezer Howard

A man of simple background but endowed with a disciplined and original mind, Ebenezer Howard was no flamboyant revolutionary but a visionary whose inventive gifts and common sense helped him to produce an original concept of social living, together with the means of making it reality. His lack of social advantages proves to be his strength, for his own life was near to the experience of those whose economic and spiritual poverty he sought to alleviate. He won support through his practical schemes as outlined in his writings and by his persuasive oratory on the platform rather than in the drawing rooms of middle-class radicals. Through single-mindedness and persistence Howard achieved the building of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City and founded a world-wide movement. But his ideas were misunderstood and perverted and he saw, with horror, the increasing sprawl of yet more city suburbs, His basic thinking remains current today and it has achieved for him a place among those whose genius has helped to improve the quality of life for the many.