City Versus Country: How to Balance in City Planning

Reading a very engaging book on Garden Cities by Ebenezer Howard right now. Here's an excerpt from Lewis Mumford's introduction, and expect a more thorough post on this subject in a week or so.

"The country, on the other hand, was equally impoverished: emptied out of its more able and enterprising spirits by the very growth of big cities. (sound familiar?) Here were fresh air, sunlight, pleasant vistas, quiet nights, all scarce commodities in the big cities; but on the other hand, there was another sort of destitution, a dearth of human companionship and of co-operative effort. Agriculture, having lost much of its local market, was a declining occupation and life in a country town was as mean, illiberal, and dismal as life in a metropolitan slum. Nor would decentralization of single industries into the open country help matters here: for if man is to live a balanced life, capable of calling out all his faculties and bringing them to perfection, he must live in a community that fully sustains them. What was needed, Howard saw-as Kropotkin at the same time proclaimed-was a marriage of town and country, of rustic health and sanity and activity and urban knowledge, urban technical facility, urban political co-operation. The instrument of that marriage was the Garden City." -Lewis Mumford, introductory essay to Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard