A pamphlet published by the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association in which Unwin, the planner of Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb, showed by simple arithmetic and paired plans that twelve houses to the acre, with gardens, cost hardly more per house than the forty of the by-law street, once the saving on roads is counted.
Unwin (1863–1940) had trained as an engineer, absorbed the ideas of Ruskin and William Morris, and with his partner Barry Parker designed cottages in which the living room, the hearth and the garden mattered more than the parlour. In Town Planning in Practice (1909) he set out the picturesque, grouped layouts of the garden suburb; in Nothing Gained by Overcrowding! he made the economic case.
The argument compares two layouts of the same ten-acre field. The by-law layout packs rows of houses along parallel streets, and much of the land goes into road. The garden layout groups fewer houses round the edge of the block, with long gardens and a shared green in the middle; the roads are fewer and cheaper, and the residents gain gardens, light and air for a small addition to rent. Twelve houses to the net acre became the standard of British public housing for decades.
The book, part by part
I Two layouts compared
The by-law street and the garden layout on the same land.
Rules: Twelve houses to the acre