Unrest against the industrial city: social reform and the “garden-city” in Spain, 1900-1923

Abstract

Synthesizing very different intellectual sources -from Marshall and Spencer to Kropotkin and Bellamy-, E. Howard´s garden-city model was able to capture the interest in social reform which had arisen in Great Britain during the last decades of the nineteenth century, in relation to matters such as land reform, co-operativism or the reversal of migration flows from country to town. Moreover, his book Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) was the culmination of a long stream of criticism against the industrial city. It became widely known amongst different ideological positions and gave rise to an important international movement between 1900 and 1923. However, in Spain its influence was very limited during this period, despite the fact that there were several intellectual trends -such as krausism, catholic corporativism and georgism- which were concerned with social reform and were discontented with the new urban reality, sharing many of Howard´s insights. On the other hand, Cebrià de Montoliu´s attempt to spread the garden-city idea in Spain had to overcome the rivalry of Arturo Soria´s linear city.