Can't say that I've lived there, but here are quick google map looks at the cities in question:

Letchworth: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Letchworth+Garden+City,+Hertfordshire,+UK/@51.9753192,-0.2126825,4154m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x48763233cbbba8d1:0x4e1913f5b672bfc4

Welwyn: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Welwyn,+Hertfordshire,+UK/@51.830048,-0.2136309,2146m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x487624b0caefa34f:0x246a752af1fed599

Welwyn looks like it has the bottlenecking problem of suburban North America (one road into a neighbourhood, long paths to get between nearly adjacent streets). It doesn't look terribly friendly to pedestrians either. Letchworth looks great to me, with easy access, what I would consider good zoning, and paths everywhere!

I'm curious, what does Howard outline as good models?

I had to read excerpts from "Garden Cities of Tomorrow" and he outlines them there. Basically, he tries to incorporate town and country (which he aptly called town-country). His plan, or at least one of them, was a giant circle, broken up like a dart board in concentric circles and "slices of pie" style. He kept all the industry on the very outside, while the inside was residential, retail, and a ton of open green space.

Yeah, Letchworth looks quite a lot better than Welwyn.

Yea, I like that idea, actually! Beijjing has a roadmap that looks similar to what you're describing, as does Moscow... Though they're so big that it's out of necessity and doesn't actually translate into quality of life I imagine, since the forms are so large that they're still impractical.

Really though, they look way better than NA just because they have roundabouts.

Howard's ideas were before his time. One of his biggest ideas in the city was called the "Crystal Palace." This was basically a glass covered bazaar in one of the concentric circles. This served as all the retail area, and was also used as a winter garden of sorts. I doubt they had the capability when he wrote this (over a hundred years ago)

The problem with those kinds of ideas (popular around 100 years ago) is that they look good on a map, but aren't great places to live because they lack the right infrastructure to support community, and the maps don't "feel" right to live in.

I haven't been to either of those cities, but I did live in Canberra for a while:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra

Canberra was designed by Walter Burley Griffin, who followed a lot of the principles of the Garden City movement.

In my view, the garden city movement produces fairly soulless cities. The "garden" areas in canberra tend to be very regimented - long lines of trees spaced equally in long green spaces sound nice, look good on a map (and artist renditions), but they don't feel like real gardens or real parks.

Also, the circular model isn't very good for navigation. It's easy to get turned around when following a long curved road, so your sense of "I should turn left here to get to where I'm going" is easily compromised.

Similarly, the idea of separating industry and residential areas sounds nice (and maybe makes sense if your industry is the loud smelly factories of 1900), but they typically create long commutes, and mean that the residential areas are mostly very suburban. Personal preference dictates whether you like that or not, of course. I will say that I think separating residential, commerce and industry in to three totally separate areas means that your cities don't have much soul. It's great to be able to pop out of work for a bit of shopping, or to nip home for a sandwich, and you can't do that if your industry is far from commercial and residential areas.

Some areas of Canberra are very nice (the botanic gardens on the hill are very pretty, the river and lake areas are great places to relax, and the bike paths are great), but some aspects of it make no sense. For example, there's very little provision for street lighting in the green spaces, which can make the parks and bike paths dangerous (especially as many cyclists ride without lights). And it definitely suffers from the "bottlenecking" problem described by Rommel.

The Crystal Palace was built in the 1850s and destroyed by fire in 1936. There are some black and white photos of it that can be googled if your interested. It was quite something, but I imagine a bugger to clean.

I think urban planning is economically and kind of morally unjustifiable. It is like the Soviet Union. Instead of granting people ownership rights to land, you heavily restrict their rights to suit what you think will be good for them.

You look at Japan where there are tons and tons of small shops everywhere and there was not a huge economic inequality - they did not have much zoning regulation at all. So every few families would open some little shop. But in some western counties big companies were better able to set laws, so it has been illegal to open a shop out of your home.

I think it is like economic planning. Like central banks. It introduces huge inefficiencies and makes everyone poorer overall. But it greatly benefits the rich and established businesses and corporations by preventing startups and any potential small-scale competition. So the government likes it.

Then again, Houston has no zoning laws. Maybe I'd move there if America didn't bankrupt itself by giving countless trillions to the banks in the post 2008 looting of America's future by the largest banks (via the federal reserve and the Bush and particularly Obama administrations). When Burger King flees to Canada you know the situation is dire.

For those too lazy to do the googling, I have done it for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_School#/media/File:Kristallpalast_Sydenham_1851_aussen.png