Pioneer of Town-Planning

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 111, 3 February 1934, Page 20

Pioneer of Town-Planning

“The birth of an ideal means that the internal monitor is giving notice that he is not satisfied with the existing state of things,” writes the Rev. Dugald Macfadyen in his biography of Sir'Ebenezer Howard, who founded the famous garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn. “The protest is likely iu initial stages to be sentimental in form and inadequate iu expression, but it is the first sign of new life. . . . “A reformer is a man who feels the coming age acutely, by instinct and ‘in his bones.’ He tries to bring the minds of his contemporaries into harmony with the next stage in the evolution of human society. When he speaks of what he feels, with the conviction and assurance which it brings to him, he is regarded as one who draws; so every reform passes through three stages. In the first it is impossible. In the next it is ridiculous, absurd. In the' third, ‘of course everyone knew that it must be so, there is nothing remarkable about that.’ “Howard had the unusual good fortune to see his reform pass through these stages and become generally, if not universally, accepted. But that is no reason why we should forget that but for his existence —his character, liis patience with his own impatience, and his persistence with other people’s temperamental stolidity—his reform would still be among things regarded as impossible.”