In 1898,
English reformer, Ebenezer Howard, published
a book titled Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in which
Howard attacked
the unhealthy, inhuman conditions of urban slums.
He, along with
other reformers, developed the concept of small, planned, garden cities,
surrounded by farmland, in which the residents jointly owned and managed
the town's
factories and farms (Callcott, 73).
Howard's garden city was
intended to create a new living environment for workers. Greenbelt,
Maryland is a direct descendent from this ideal city (Fogle, 24). In the 1910s philanthropists and investors
launched the first two
experiments in Letchworth and Welwyn, England; in the 1920s came Radburn,
New Jersey. These projects marked the beginning of a new genre of
community planning. Meanwhile, President Roosevelt's New Deal faced the
challenge of providing work for the ten million Americans unemployed at
the time. To combat this growing problem, the Farm Resettlement
Administration, headed by Rexford Guy Tugwell, planned the construction of
four greenbelt towns. The first of these would be named Greenbelt,
Maryland, whose development
and founding ideals are discussed
by Tariq Dahmas. This effort has proven still to be the largest make-work
project in
the Washington area. However, Greenbelt is something far more than a huge
relief project. It is in fact one of the outstanding demonstrations in
new methods of community building in the United States (Tugwell, 3). The Resettlement Administration aimed to
"establish, maintain, and
operate communities for the resettlement of destitute or low-income
families" (Mach, 29). As a result, the
government acquired nineteen
square miles near Berwyn, Maryland, and through 1937 and 1938 employed
some nine thousand workers for its development and construction. Sameer
Gokhale discusses how Greenbelt tackled the issue of unemployment during
the Depression. On April
30, 1936, the complete Greenbelt plans were submitted for review at the
White House. The first tenants moved into the completed town on September
30, 1937. The project costs totaled approximately thirteen million
dollars. As the New Deal's chief model of community
development
and most
ambitious experiment in public housing, Greenbelt faced opposition from
other political parties. Anti-New Dealists dubbed it "the first
communist
town in America" (Callcott, 73). Enemies of the
project protested the
excessive power the government would gain over the development of the
community. In 1952, Congress forced the government to sell the
experiment. Before this, however, a community had been formed and
informed by the innovative planning and design elements incorporated into
the fabric of Greenbelt.
History | Architecture and Planning | Final Thoughts |