Example housing dissertation topic 7:

The Garden City: A housing movement revisited.

Rapidly approaching its 90th anniversary the Garden City movement revolutionised the design of housing and communities within the United Kingdom. Indeed, with its wider frontages, open spaces and non-car areas, the movement pioneered a number of features that have remained as staple ingredients of housing developments to the present day. Through reviewing archival primary sources and undertaking contemporary primary interviews, this dissertation seeks to evaluate the on-going relevance of the housing and building ideals enshrined within the movement and through so doing, proposes its wider usage in the housing developments of the 21st century.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Buder, S. (1990). Visionaries and planners: The Garden City movement and the modern community. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Meacham, S. (1999). Regaining paradise: Englishness and the early Garden City movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Reade, C.C. (1913). ‘A defence of the Garden City movement’. Town Planning Review, vol. 4(3), pp. 245.