Laurent Coudroy de Lille, Milena Crespo, Benoît Pouvreau Des cités-jardins pour le XXIe siècle Valorisation, préservation, perspectives

As the 19th century drew to a close in Great Britain, an alternative to the suffocating and impoverished industrial city was urgently needed. In the mind of the town planner Ebenezer Howard, the concept of the garden city took shape: a city outside the city that reconnects with nature and provides its inhabitants with the conditions for individual and collective well-being.
Social and ecological, this model spread throughout the 20th century throughout the world.
What is the situation today with these housing complexes, once the pride of the nation? Are the garden cities still intact recognised for their true heritage value? Are they safe from the game of property interests? As for the metropolises of the 21st century, which need to be renatured and reconciled in order to remain livable, would they not benefit from reappropriating this humanist and landscape approach, which has been widely acclaimed?
Adopting in turn the point of view of history, experience and prospective, some sixty international contributors draw up here a contrasting assessment of the situation. While it shows a clear concern about the future of historical achievements, it also testifies to a real hope: that of seeing the spirit of the garden cities reborn within an urban planning system forced to rethink itself in the face of the challenges of a changing world.