The area around Letchworth is green almost all the way through, which was the original idea. Most front doors are a short walk from a park. There is water within reach, and there's a cycle route nearby. Gardens are generous. The garden city plan has held up well on the green space it promised.
The average Letchworth home is about 150 metres from public green space, with about 24 green spaces within a kilometre. That covers Howard Park and Gardens and Broadway, both on the national register of historic parks and gardens, as well as a large common on the town's northern side. In a town named after gardens, a park round the corner is just the plan working.
Water is close as well. The average home is about 480 metres from the nearest blue space, with about 14 bodies of water, ponds and streams among them, within a kilometre. None of it is big enough to plan a weekend around, but it is enough to walk the dog past.
The National Cycle Network is about 450 metres from the average home, and about 61% of homes count as close to it. That puts the open countryside within easy reach for anyone with a bike.
The high street is fairly ordinary. Business rate records list 320 shops, 20 pubs and 19 restaurants. Twenty pubs is a modest number for a town this size. Of the 186 food outlets with a hygiene rating, about 76% hold the top score of five.
Across the North Hertfordshire council area, fine-particle air pollution averaged about 7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024.
The countryside around Letchworth is older than the town. A Bronze Age hill fort stood on Wilbury Hill beside the Icknield Way, and Norton and Willian were villages long before the garden city was built between them. Both still have their own conservation areas and, in Willian's case, a character of its own. Baldock and Hitchin are next door, with Stotfold and Radwell beyond them, so a buyer can choose between garden-city avenues and village lanes without leaving the postcode. The Icknield Way was carrying traffic past Wilbury Hill long before anyone drew Letchworth on a plan.
Private gardens add about 115,000 square metres of outdoor space for every 1,000 residents across the town's 23 neighbourhood areas. That is the useful figure here. A share-of-area figure would hide how much space people actually have behind their houses. The plots were laid out when the garden was the main thing a house was sold on.
The rating list for the area holds 1,228 business premises. The largest groups are 298 offices, 240 shops, 169 premises in a factory and workshop class and 160 warehouses. These are premises on the valuation list, so some may be empty or being used differently. Ebenezer Howard insisted on keeping industry away from the houses, and much of what got kept apart turned out to be office work.
Food hygiene is good. Of the 186 rated premises, about 76% have the top score and about 2% are rated low.
No area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest or ancient woodland overlaps Letchworth. The landscape here is protected by the town plan more than by any national designation. Howard surrounded his town with a belt of open countryside, an idea that later became the green belt.
The area around Letchworth is one of its real strengths, with a park round the corner, a decent garden and open country nearby for almost everyone who lives there.