Building the towns of the future

It is unlikely any residents of 10 Downing Street have found time to read Garden Cities of Tomorrow, published in 1902.

Gordon Brown is unlikely to be any different if he becomes Prime Minister.

But his dream of building five so-called "eco-towns", providing up to 100,000 new homes, would undoubtedly have struck a chord with its author Ebenezer Howard.

A journalist and social reformer, Howard's call for new conurbations to be designed for "humanity at large", to recognise the "social side of our nature" and to give full expression to "modern scientific methods" would have met with the Chancellor's approval.

Finished in 1903, Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire was the fruit of Howard's vision for a carefully planned town, limited in size, architecturally refined and in harmony with the rural landscape surrounding it.

The Garden City movement which Howard hoped to launch internationally never caught on, with Letchworth's neighbour Welwyn the sole other example of the concept in the UK.

But a hundred years later, is there anything that Mr Brown and other supporters of carbon-neutral towns can learn from the housing projects of the past?

Letchworth certainly thinks so, describing itself as a "model" for contemporary efforts to develop sustainable and environmentally friendly communities.

"It is quite unique," Terry Gray, from the Letchworth Heritage Foundation - the body which owns and administers much of the town's property and amenities - says of the town.

"It was Howard's idea to bring town and country together. One of Gordon Brown's ideas is to build more council-owned social houses. That is what Howard did 100 years ago."

more from the BBC