Global Greenbelts: Population Thinking and Sprawl-Control in the US and the UK

Abstract: Urban greenbelts are an important aspect of city planning history, commonly associated with Ebenezer Howard and the early twentieth century ‘garden city.’ The measure sought to both control exurban sprawl while also building new cities and neighborhoods on greenfield locations. This article expands the chronology of greenbelt cities to the postwar United States, arguing that a key concern of the planning measure was controlling population, often drawing on ideas of overcrowding leading to squalor and ill-health. Using archival sources from the US and the UK, it shows how urban greenbelts in Anglosphere countries functioned to select, administer, and educate citizens on healthful recreation and suburban living in a variety of political contexts, including joint-stock company experiments in early twentieth century UK, New Deal public works programs in the US, and municipal environmentalism in North America in the 1960s.