The city of Greenbelt, Maryland was built in 1937 as an outgrowth
of distinct movements in Social policy and community planning. The latter
aspect grew out of Sir Ebenezer Howard's Garden City approach to town
planning, which aimed to provide natural areas for residents of cities.
Garden cities were surrounded by countryside; city expansion was only to
take place by developing new garden cities on the other side of the green
belt. The result would be clusters of cities grouped around a central
city. The former aspect, of the social policy, was President Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt tried
anything and everything to try to bring the nation out of that economic
crisis. The Greenbelt plan was one of the experimental attempts to save
the nation. It was the brainchild of the president's advisor Rexford
Tugwell. 
The President and Tugwell had selected a total of three "green
towns" that would be built around the nation. The "green towns", with
Greenbelt as their centerpiece were featured at the 1939 New York World's
Fair as the city of the future. What made it so different-so
revolutionary that it would be heralded as a city of the future?
It was different from its beginning. The concept was developed
by Ebenezer Howard in 1898, combining socialist principles with romantic
ideals to propose a new kind of community; the garden city (from lecture
notes taken from Professor Melvin Levin's URSP 100). 
In the
English
reformer's vision, the best of the countryside and city could be combined
by building small, rather self-sufficient communities limited to about
30,000 people, surrounded by permanent green belts (taken from URSP 100
notes). Howard's ideal was to create a better city, with trees, ponds,
and no pollution. His goal would be realized some ten years later with
the building of garden cities outside London.
The movement finally caught on in the United States in 1937 with Greenbelt, Maryland. It was still revolutionary. It was revolutionary in the sense that it was antithetic to the way the United States was and has been. Since the 1920's, the United States has generally grown in the manner of suburban sprawl. This was a result of the 17 million cars that American now owned, which gave them the ability to move farther away from the undesirables of the inner city. Sprawl, however, is certainly the best way to define this outward growth. It was without either planning or reason that homes sprung up where they did in suburban America. Greenbelt would be different. It would be planned. It would be planned in its location, design, population, and economy.
The location was selected in 1935 by the Resettlement Administration. There were 547 almost identical townhouses in the blueprint for the city. A School and playgrounds were incorporated into the design as well. It was to be fourteen miles from Washington D.C.
The greatest amount of planning came in the city's design. The
townhouses and apartments were all to be nearly identical respectively.
The townhomes had both a garden side and a service side. The homes are
aranged in
superblocks.
The service side
faced the street for utility in mail delivery and trash collection. The
garden side, located in the back, was the more aesthetically pleasing of
the two sides. The garden side of a row of homes usually faced the garden
side of another row. There would be a sidewalk between them, but no
fences were allowed. The walking routes to get to the playgrounds and
school were designed so that the children would not have to cross any
roadways.
An important part of the design were the townhouses mentioned
earlier. The homes were utilitarian in nature. 
The primary goal of
the
greenbelt house was to provide an economical living space for those hit
hard by the depression. It was meant to be modest. Adam
Fegely gives
a great description of the international style used in the design of the
homes. He compares his parents' home to the Greenbelt homes
stylistically. Adam comes to the conclusion that there are many
similarities between his
parents' home and the houses built in Greenbelt. Socially, however, there
are many differences. Adam writes that his parents "set out to build
their home they searched for an area in which this style [contemporary]
would fit." They built their home, as it is, for aesthetic reasons. For
this reason the Fegely home serves as a status symbol, as well as a
residence. It can be said that the Greenbelt homes were not meant nor did
they hold such a value. Their can be no symbol of status in the Greenbelt
house if all the homes as almost identical and relatively small at that.
Whereas, in the community where Adam's parents live, the house can be an
outward expression of the personality, individuality, and wealth of its
inhabitants because not every house is the same.
The population that would inhabit Greenbelt was as planned as the rest of the city. In its attempt to populate the city, the United States' government chose to create an economically homogeneous and somewhat ethnically diverse population. The former was made up of mainly of the proletarian class, with annual incomes of $1,000 to $2,000. The city was a little more diverse in its ethnic makeup than in that of its economics. Here the diversity was based upon religion. It was split up among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; Protestants mad up the largest group, followed by Catholics, and then Jews. There seems to be no mention of Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, or any other religion. This is quite indicative of the ethnocentrism of the Roosevelt administration and the nation at the time. According to Westley Alexander's section on Greenbelt's rules there were fewer than a 0.5% African American population in Greenbelt, in its early history. Given the time period this statistic isn't very surprising, though it is upsetting that such a socially plan was so racially homogeneous. The city also looked for people with a civic consciousness--they were to be leaders in a community of leaders. Westley give some great statistics on the general age of the population as well as some insight as to what the population dynamics meant to the city. Another focus of the planned community were the Co-ops. This was a revolutionary idea for the planning of Greenbelt. There were to be now privately owned businesses in Greenbelt. This had two main purposes. Firstly, it made sure that everyone (male only) could find work in Greenbelt if they had to. The second reason for this was so that the new residents who were moving in could find somewhere to buy what they needed. The severity of the Great Depression left few business capable of attending to the needs of a new community, and very few people had the capital necessary to create and own businesses in greenbelt in 1937. Therefore, for the best of the community it was necessary to create Co-ops.