New Deal utopias
By: Reblando, Jason
Publisher: Heidelberg : Kehrer, c2017.Description: 175 p. : ill. ; 29 cm.ISBN: 9783868287905Subject(s): United States. Resettlement Administration -- History -- Pictorial works | City planning -- United States -- History -- 20th century -- Pictorial works | New Deal (1933-1939)DDC classification: 779.473 RE NEItem type | Home library | Call number | Status | Notes | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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REGULAR | University of Wollongong in Dubai Main Collection | 779.473 RE NE (Browse shelf) | Available | July2018 | T0060102 |
New Deal Utopias' explores three planned communities built by the US government during the Great Depression, collectively known as Greenbelt Towns. The photographs of the built environments and landscapes of Greenbelt, Maryland, Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin, evoke utopia both as an idea and place in the American mind. The towns were designed to be model cities to address the social and economic discrepancies brought on and accentuated by the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the program was critiqued as socialistic and communistic by conservative members of Congress, industrial and corporate leaders, and newspapers hostile to New Deal policies, yet they still managed to make an indelible impression on urbanist ideas in America. This book emphasizes that the Greenbelt towns are an overlooked, but crucial part of the American landscape, as we continue to grapple with the complex roles of housing, nature, and government in contemporary life.