In order to gain some insight into both today's society and the Greenbelt society of the mid to late 1930s, it is important for us to get some background on Greenbelt. The significance of Greenbelt is in its status as the most developed and the most intact of the three planned communities built through the Federal Government's "Green Towns Program" during the Great Depression (Berger,7). The "Green Towns Program" was a direct attempt by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" administration to address the problem of deteriorating urban conditions (with the industrial revolution and then the Great Depression, the cities were bombarded with people trying to find work). The idea was to create better living environments in rural and suburban areas for the urban poor and working classes. The government conducted a nationwide search and stringent screening process to determine who the original Greenbelt residents would be. Prevailing prejudice at the time probably excluded blacks and many minorities from the selection process (England). The fact that the residents were screened is in fact a key reason for the success of Greenbelt and is also a key point in my analysis.

A major side benefit of the project was the creation of many jobs for many of the same people for whom the communities were being built. This actually proved to be one of the downfalls of the program because the added expense of using manual labor, particularly when machine labor was not only available but also considerably less expensive, caused the project to go way beyond the budgeted cost. This of course gave credibility to many of the objections made by opponents of the project and in time derailed the project with only three communities (Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. ) having been built although several hundred were originally envisioned.

The homes themselves were built small but solid. The size issue reflects both the desire to fit as many units as possible on the property and the apparent belief that potential tenants (being of lower socio-economic status) would have fewer belongings and therefore need less space. The solid construction came as a direct result of the influence of Rexford Guy Tugwell, then head of the Resettlement Administration which was in charge of the "Green Towns" project. In his words: "It is our belief that the highest standards of construction are essential to to genuinely low-cost building" (Williamson,34). The homes were designed to be functional if not beautiful and it is a testament to both their functionality and quality of construction that Greenbelt remains essentially intact today.

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