About Tomorrow 125
‘Tomorrow 125’ is a project exploring how the Garden City idea can help us construct a pathway to a hopeful future based on a fairer society. At a time when the climate crisis is impossible to ignore, and we cautiously feel our way into the new post-pandemic ‘normal’, does the Garden City idea offer insights into a new way to live?
In 2023 the book written by the Garden City inventor Ebenezer Howard, in which he outlines a practical framework for a fairer society, will be 125 years old. Over the next 3 years, the TCPA, which Ebenezer Howard founded in 1899 to promote the Garden City idea, will lead an exploration of the relevance of the Garden City idea for our collective future.
We hope you will join us on this journey to return to the roots of these radical and ambitious ideas.
A little more about the project...
Ebenezer Howard's Garden City idea was a practical way of securing the good life by creating conditions in which everyone can thrive.
It was a uniquely practical idea based on sharing the values created from developing places. It proved to be the most influential and enduring examples of an alternative and sustainable way of living that the UK has ever produced. Despite its problems it still remains a powerful and hopeful blueprint for a humane future in an era framed by the health and climate crisis.
As we build up to the 125th anniversary of the publication of one of the most influential books on living ever written in the English language, the TCPA is asking how relevant the Garden City idea is to our collective future? We are asking this question knowing that the label ‘garden cities’ is a much abused and devalued term. Used by some to greenwash bad development and by others simply to mean soulless suburbs. Howard’s work might be the foundation of town planning in the UK, but few are willing to talk about its creative ambition or practical relevance and his ideas are invisible to most communities.
As we move from a health pandemic into a climate crisis the question of how human beings can live together in peace and in harmony with the planet upon which they depend is the political question of our time. Our contention is that no one has answered that question as compellingly or as effectively as Howard's ideas set out in ‘tomorrow’. With time running out we need to test whether the detail of the ideas still work what needs to be done to update them.
Find out more about the roots of the Garden City idea here: Tomorrow 125