Architects have warned that a planned wave of garden cities could challenge the principles of localism as the plans drew immediate criticism from countryside campaigners.

David Cameron announced this week that consultation will take place later this year on rolling out garden cities in a bid to tackle the country’s growing housing crisis.

The prime minister was seeking to assuage fears that inappropriate development would take place under his government’s planning reforms, due to be published next Tuesday. In his budget speech, chancellor George Osborne promised the “biggest reduction in business red tape ever undertaken”.

In a speech this week at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Cameron said: “In the last century, private and social enterprise created places like Hampstead Garden Suburb, Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City — not perfect, but popular — green, planned, secure, with gardens, places to play and characterful houses; not just car-dominated concrete grids.

“Yes we need more housing, but sprawling over the countryside isn’t the answer.”

While experts welcomed the opportunities garden cities might offer architects, they warned that ministers would struggle to implement a wave of housing development, while promising greater decision-making powers for communities under localism.

The plans have been slammed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England which said Cameron had displayed “a disturbing misunderstanding of planning”.

The commentators are seeing the garden cities as similar to the new eco-towns, which were launched under the previous Labour government but struggled to gain traction with the public. Planned as stand-alone developments, the towns were remodelled as urban extensions and many have since been dropped. “The similarities are almost amusing,” said Brian Water, former chair of the Eco-towns Delivery Consortium. “It is definitely an echo of Prescott’s eco-towns without the toxic ‘eco’ sticker.”

But Ben Derbyshire, managing director at HTA, said the garden cities concept could sit within the government’s planning reforms.

“Garden cities and sustainable suburbs that conform to the highest standards of placemaking can and should be part of this agenda,” he said. “It’s possible to create self-sufficient, sustainable neighbourhoods on a commercial basis.”

A spokeswoman for The Prince’s Foundation added: “Garden cities were a lofty ideal for the early part of last century, and hopefully we can blend the best of that experience with what we now know about sustainability.”

Letchworth garden city
Letchworth was planned by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in 1903. It was one of the first schemes to introduce green-belt land, to curtail outward growth, and the zoning of functions.

Houses with wide frontages to provide generous amounts of daylight, were grouped in symmetrical rows around inward-looking cul-de-sacs.
Today some 33,600 people live in Letchworth.

Parker’s studio (above) was built in 1907 and is one of the most authentic examples of vernacular revival.