The Socially-Engineered Utopia

I was on the metro in D.C. taking the green line as far north as the train would go.  I was heading for an oddity of a city called Greenbelt, Maryland.  I first learned of the town in the tiny bookshop next to the Franklin Roosevelt monument.  There were signs on the wall that described the major tenets of his long presidency.  One sign in particular offered the specifics of the New Deal, the country’s recovery plan in response to the Great Depression.  As part of this reform, Roosevelt planned to build three new green cities from scratch.  One of them was Greenbelt. 

The federal government, with the guiding hand of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, plotted the town on a lot that used to be a tobacco farm a few miles outside the nation’s capital.  The town was designed to be autonomous, prosperous, and safe.  Roads were laid down.  Then pathways were built to go under the roadways, so that children wouldn’t have to cross the street to get to school.  All of the major buildings, the nearby houses, and the park were connected by pedestrian-only pathways that cut through forested green space.

The goal of this experiment was to socially engineer a self-sufficient community that would provide affordable housing and provide jobs.  Aspiring occupants had to apply for residence.  Only those genuinely enthusiastic about communal activities were accepted.  This was not a city for hermits or disgruntled neighbors that stood watch on their porch, shotgun in hand, ready to fend off trespassers who dared to step on the grass.  At first, only whites were allowed to live in the community, even though many African-Americans constructed the buildings.  Greenbelt did not accept other races until the ‘60s.      

Aside from this blatant racism, Greenbelt was engineered to be neighborly.  The architects initially provided the townsfolk with all the necessities for sustaining a healthy community.  There were schools for children as well as educational programs for adults.  There was a church, a public library, a grocery store, a movie theater, a swimming pool, and outdoor spaces to exercise.  The social engineers fostered a sense of progress into the Greenbelt citizens.  Not only were they were encouraged to be both mentally and physically fit, they were first and foremost instilled with a sense of camaraderie with their neighbors.

When Greenbelt Consumer Services decided to sell the original grocery store and pharmacy, the citizens organized and decided to buy them to keep the businesses within the community.  Before the entire city was completed, a caring resident wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt asking for aid to complete recreational facilities.  The First Lady talked to her husband, and Mr. President granted Greenbelt the funds to complete their utopia.

With all this presidential planning, I assumed Greenbelt and its unique story would be well-known in the D.C. area.  But that is not the case.  After disembarking from the metro, I hopped on a bus that would take me into the historic town.  I asked the driver if his route went next to the Greenbelt Museum and the New Deal Café.  There was even a blip on Google Maps that indicated the position of this eatery named after FDR’s economic recovery program.

“There’s a museum up there?” the bus driver asked. He never heard of the café either.  “What street is that on?”

I consulted my GPS.  “Crescent,” I replied. 

After confirming this street intersected his route, I took my seat and wondered how this man was ignorant to the history of the very city he drives through every day.  He didn’t even know there was a museum there that detailed Greenbelt’s story.  Once I got to the museum, I realized why.  The museum looks like it could be somebody’s house, and it probably is for six days a week.  It is only open for four hours on Sunday. 

I walked along the pathways that ducked under the road near the school.  As I trod on the pathways that I had previously read about, I noted the odd sensation of having been here before.  The feeling was similar to watching a movie based on a book I’ve read previously.  Like a faithful adaptation, the scene before my eyes matched with the image I conceived in my mind.

I continued on the path to the community center, the former elementary school.  Inside, there were two women gossiping in a positive way about the recent activities of the townsfolk.  I didn’t linger long enough to get a grip on their conversation, but based on their tones they were not bickering or criticizing.  The ladies smiled at me as I passed them.  

I was going to ask them a question, but I was not prepared with a specific agenda.  The first question to come to mind was, “What is this place?” but that seemed so incredibly vague and stupid that I was likely to walk out of there embarrassed at my elementary reporting skills.  Initially I was hesitant to enter the building at all because I thought I wouldn’t be allowed, or I’d be forced to invent a reason for my trespassing.

I just wanted to wander around the place and learn about the community.  I knew I wanted to write a piece about Greenbelt, so my desire to accumulate enough knowledge motivated me to step through the doors.  I thought to myself, if I really want to be a writer, or break into journalism, I should start asking people questions to get the scoop.  I considered the tactics of various travel writers.  Bill Bryson usually potters about and describes what he sees as though he’s a fly on the wall.  Others, like Paul Theroux, get directly involved with the locals.  I enjoy writing dialogue when the situation calls for a natural exchange, but, without a professional assignment, an interview seemed silly to me, so I smiled at the ladies and entered a room filled with poster-boards that detailed the history of Greenbelt by each decade from the 1930s to the present day.  There was even a small TV in the corner of the room that was placed there so visitors could watch a VHS tape of the 1939 documentary The City, which I’m sure would reiterate the info found on the poster-boards. 

After conducting my research, I passed the ladies once more who were then engaged in idle conversation with a bald man.  I’m not sure what job these ladies were performing.  Perhaps they were the town heralds who spread the local scuttlebutt, or maybe they were Secret Service guards responsible for protecting the nuclear warheads stashed under the gymnasium.  If I should ever return to Greenbelt, I will know which question to ask: “So what exactly do you do here?”

I exited the community center and headed toward the main attractions.  A retro movie theater was closed for renovation.  

To make up for this delay, the theater was screening free movies in the park once a week.  Even the business owners are friendly and not driven by greed. 

The co-op supermarket was still in business.  I snapped a photo of it, and a man wearing a green apron on his smoke break gave me a quizzical look.

I just wanted to solidify its existence, because, prior to this trip, the grocery store had only been printed words.  Everything seemed so perfect in this town I had to question how a place like this could exist.  For a second, I considered that this friendliness was a façade that concealed a dark secret.  The townspeople were really cannibals who lure in unsuspecting victims to save money on groceries.  Although Greenbelt would provide a great location for an episode of The Walking Dead, I dismissed these thoughts that tainted my view of Greenbelt.     

 

Apparently it was open mic night at the New Deal Café.  A couple emerged from the café contemplating the morality of leaving during someone’s act.  The woman was worried the singer would assume they were leaving to escape his voice.  The man reassured her.  The singer probably thinks they’re dipping out for a quick smoke break and that their exit is totally unrelated to his musical talents or lack thereof.  On the other side of the café, three middle-aged ladies and a man with a gray ponytail discussed life’s treasures over cups of coffee.  I actually have no idea what they were talking about, but they all seemed so comfortable in each other’s company.  The sense of togetherness seemed breathe-able as though camaraderie were a gas that was pumped into the atmosphere.

Each citizen seems to care a great deal for the general welfare of the town.  Everyone I passed said hello to me.  I even witnessed a pedestrian smile and wave to the Korean man who ran the local mini mart.  During my first visit to New York City, I bought a magnet at a souvenir shop, and I was shocked that the cashier didn’t say a word to me.  During a gondola ride in Venice, the gondolier didn’t even acknowledge me.  Instead, he spoke in Italian to his fellow gondoliers, who were probably complaining about their wives.  When you see people going out of their way to be friendly with mini-mart cashiers, you know you’re in a welcoming town.  In the movies, these guys always have a shotgun under the register, but I doubt I’d find one in the Greenbelt mini-mart.  These people probably never killed each other.  A zero percent murder rate is the pinnacle of neighborliness.          

While I was inside the community center, I found a written note under the heading “Share a Greenbelt Memory.”  This person wrote, “Growing up in Greenbelt taught me my most important life lessons:  how to live cooperatively with my friends, family, and co-workers.” As I contemplated that note and the entire history of Greenbelt, I observed the group of friends sitting together outside the New Deal Cafe during this lazy evening.  I thought of the hostellers back in D.C. who avoided eye contact with each other, who preferred their phones over company.  There was none of that here.  The social engineers of Greenbelt were successful in their experiment. Nearly eighty years after the town was planned, this cooperative utopia continues to thrive.