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Jason Reblando | New Deal Utopias
$10 suggested donation at the door. Includes wiine.
Photographer Jason Reblando will lecture on Thursday, February 22, as part of MAS Context’s 2018 Spring Talks series. The lecture will take place at the Society of Architectural Historians (
New Deal Utopias
The photography book New Deal Utopias offers an opportunity to reflect one of the most ambitious but overlooked federal programs in American history. During the Great Depression, the U.S. government constructed three planned communities – Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin, to house displaced farmers and poor urban dwellers. Collectively known as the “Greenbelt Towns,” the housing program embodied the hope that these new model communities would usher in a new way of American life based on cooperation, not individualism. As the design and philosophy of the towns were inspired by Sir Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City principles, New Deal Utopias focuses on the designed landscapes and built environments of the towns, meditating on the connection of “town” and “country.” Howard envisioned cities where nature would be part of everyday life, and residents would have the social and economic advantages of living in a community with each other. Using Farm Security Administration photographs of the construction of the Greenbelt Towns, as well as Jason Reblando’s contemporary photographs of the communities, the proposed lecture discusses a fascinating chapter of architectural and planning history during a time when the government enacted bold and ambitious plans to protect who Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “Forgotten Man.” New Deal Utopias explores how we continue to grapple with the complex roles of housing, nature, and government in contemporary life.
Jason Reblando contributed to our Legacy issue with his article “New Deal Utopias.” You can read it online at
Copies of New Deal Utopias will be available for purchase during the event. The book, published by Kehrer Verlag and designed by JNL graphic design, includes texts by Natasha Egan and Robert Leighninger Jr.
For more information about this talk, please visit:
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