Image By Raincityblues (Raincityblues (talk)) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

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Personally, when I read Howard’s work, one thing consistently popped into my head.

This is a great idea! It would never work here.

But, I mean when we had our discussion on September 28th, one of the things that was apparently about my approach to the idea of the Garden city was that I’m a skeptic of it. Which couldn’t be truer.

While I love the idea of a Garden city, one that allows for cheap rent, a real community feel and one that works with nature (in a way), it’s highly impractical. One of my comments on Monday was that this idea seems fit for places like the Prairies where we have vast tracts of open land where multiple cities could be set up in a true sense of Howard’s idea. The issue with his idea is that terrain has a massive influence on how a city can grow, the industries that it can be involved in, as well as its potential for more. One of the examples that immediately comes to mind for me is Kelowna itself. We could never have a Garden City in the way that Howard envisions it in our region because of a multitude of factors.

Kelowna’s growth is dictated by the region it’s located in. We’re in a valley, so naturally, the city flows with the valley, expanding first to the easiest areas along the valley floor then along the gentler slopes and then up the hills to the plateaus. Howards plan would call for large areas of flat land, something that we just do not have much of.

Then, when you think of our regional economy, the first things that pop to mind are Fruit, Wine and Tourism. Neither of these are things that Howard properly addressed in his plan. How would tourism work in Kelowna if we were the Garden city concept? Would it even? Then our Wine industry, though it seems well suited for Howard’s agricultural aims, it doesn’t feel like a good fit for the idea. While our fruit industry seems well suited for his ideas, again with the same thing as wine, it doesn’t seem like a good fit.

Why is that? Well our fruit and wine industry are large because of the fact that they flourish here because of the region, its temperatures, its soil, and the disposition of the valley. These are all things unique to our region, something that wouldn’t fit well with Howard’s universal plan.

What I guess I’m really trying to get at, is that while Howard’s Garden City proposal is an inherently good idea, it’s much too vague for a lot of regions. Economies and the growth of a town are dictated by the unique circumstances in which said town is situated in, something that Howard doesn’t address (or at least that I can see) in the least in his plan. Thus, it would never work in Kelowna. Or in reality, any of British Columbia in my opinion.