Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C. Greenbelt is notable for being the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal Greenbelt Towns: Greenhills, Ohio and Greendale, Wisconsin being the others. Thus, it was planned and built by the Federal government. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935 by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell, whose perceived collectivist ideology attracted opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration. The project came into legal existence in the spring of 1935. On April 8, 1935, Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Under the authority granted to him by this legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, on May 1, 1935, establishing the United States Resettlement Administration.
Originally referred to as Maryland Special Project No. 1, the project was officially given the name Greenbelt when the Division of Suburban Resettlement of the Resettlement Administration began construction on January 13, 1936, approximately eight miles north of Washington.