An Enchanted World Order: Theosophical Garden Cities in England, India and Australia

The international spread of the Garden City movement has been historicized as a tussle between

the ideals of social reform first advocated by Ebenezer Howard and the commercial viability of

the many garden suburbs that were built. Garden suburbs are noted for betraying Howard’s

vision of class mixing and communal ownership of land. Nonetheless, the developers of garden

suburbs shared Howard’s conviction that town planning could remedy overcrowding in cities.

This paper uncovers how the Theosophical Society brought global attention to Ebenezer

Howard’s Garden City concept even as it raised doubts about the ability of physical planning to

remove the public health problems associated with uncontrolled city growth.

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 with the objective of

studying paranormal phenomena, but quickly grew into an international network of professionals

searching for spiritual and philosophical alternatives to organized, mainstream religion.

Theosophists were amongst the earliest residents of the First Garden City of Letchworth, and by

1920 the Theosophical Society built a boarding school and a Lodge in Letchworth, and had

organized several conferences on the progressive planning ideals of the Garden City movement.

Between 1924 and 1928 the Theosophical Society built its own Garden City on the outskirts of

Bombay, and in 1926 it launched a lecture series, a magazine and a radio station that would

popularize the idea of Garden City living in Australia.

Using urban design plans, polemical texts and newspaper articles from England, India

and Australia, this paper argues that the Theosophical Society appropriated and transformed

Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept from an ideal of city planning into a means of conflict

resolution. Thus, I show that while the Theosophical Society viewed the Garden City as a

modern example of communitarian living, it did not associate the Garden City with any

particular urban form. On the contrary, the Theosophical Society was remarkably anti-formalist

in its study and reproduction of the Garden City. Rather than specify the ideal density, plot

layout or open space requirements for its own Garden cities in India and Australia, the

Theosophical Society only specified how to resolve disputes between members of a

Theosophical Garden City. Instead of seeing the Garden City as an ideal urban form in which

different classes lived together in an organic social harmony, the Theosophical Society

understood the Garden City as a site for provoking and transcending social antagonisms. By the

mid-1920s, the Theosophical Society would even publicly advocate its Garden Cities as means

for overcoming the rise of Fascism and Soviet Socialism.

This paper revises the history of the Garden City movement by showing how the

Theosophical Society appropriated and transformed Ebenezer Howard’s idea of land-based

social reform into a program that used experimental pedagogy and public arts performance for

conflict resolution. More broadly, this paper also provides insight into how the rhetoric of

spirituality challenged the normative public health goals of modern town planning.