The sleepy town of Letchworth, England, may have been the first garden city, but it wasn't particularly radical, says Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column.

In the exhibition Alternative Letchworth, there is a series of little surveys you can fill out and attach to the wall, in the fashion popular recently in contemporary art galleries and museums. One of them asks if you like any of the following: comfortable clothes, healthy food, fresh air and the outdoors, open-toe sandals, and finally whether your school was co-educational. If you've ticked the "yes" box to at least four then it tells you to consider yourself "a Letchworth crank".
It's a neat little joke about this quietly important little town on the northern edge of London's commuter belt, founded in 1903. This is, as a sign at the railway station tells you, "the first garden city", a project influential the world over in demonstrating that new towns planned in a new way were possible and desirable. In its first years, Letchworth was famous for more radical kinds of crankery, and it's this that the exhibition explores. Other, more uncomfortable ? but equally accurate ? tick-boxes could ask: "Are you a vegetarian" Are you a socialist" Do you think men and women are equal" Do you think women should wear corsets and that people should wear hats at all times" Are you comfortable with homosexuality" Do you think that society can be improved through arch...