The paper outlines the main guidelines, both theoretical and practical, behind the drawing up of Ostia’s general urban development plan of 1916 (Ostia Nuova). The plan had been commissioned by Rome’s city council, the job falling to the Associazione Artistica fra i Cultori di Architettura a Roma. The housing project was non intensive, based on the English garden city movement, popular at the time, as well as Gustavo Giovannoni’s theories on living spaces. There are other comparable examples in Rome of this type of decentralised housing: the Aniene garden city complex in Montesacro and the Garbatella district as a whole. They provide an opportunity to take another look at different possible interpretations of Giovannoni’s contributions to the debate over the character and use of urban space. The debate sought to create a possible model for a pleasing arrangement for the various levels within an urban landscape. This was the case both when houses were placed out of the centre of town and when designed with more open spaces between one building and another. This appreciation of the urban environment clearly reflects the influence of a series of European trends, including Camillo Sitte, Charles Buls and Joseph Stübben’s ideas on urban aesthetics, and the English garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin. In the first twenty or so years of the 1900s the question of creating a pleasing urban environment was fundamental to town planning and architecture. This revolved around modern day thinking about housing and a reinterpretation of various artistic traits and environments that set apart different countries, cities and regions.