Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Greenbelt is the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal Greenbelt Towns, the others being Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin. Greenbelt was planned and built by the federal government as an all-White town. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935 by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell, whose perceived collectivist ideology attracted opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, located directly adjacent to Greenbelt's eastern boundary, utilizes a Greenbelt postal address (Greenbelt, MD 20768), as well. It is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place.
Greenbelt Park, a unit of the National Park System, is located within the City of Greenbelt's boundaries, at its southernmost portion.
Transportation
thumb|left|I-95/I-495 southbound in Greenbelt
Roads and highways
Two major highways pass through and have interchanges in Greenbelt: the Capital Beltway (I-95/I-495) and the National Park Service's owned and maintained portion of the Baltimore–Washington Parkway (unsigned MD 295). The Greenbelt portion of the Baltimore–Washington Parkway (B–W Parkway) is part of the parkway's 19-mile section which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Additionally, Greenbelt Road is part of state highway MD 193, which connects several suburban communities in both Prince George's and Montgomery counties. Kenilworth Avenue (MD 201) traverses Greenbelt in a north–south direction, running parallel to the B–W Parkway, providing an alternate travel route into Washington, D.C., from Greenbelt. The southernmost Maryland portion of Kenilworth Avenue forms a major interchange with both the B–W Parkway and US 50 near the Maryland–D.C. line, and continues into Washington, as the Kenilworth Avenue Freeway (DC 295).
Public transportation
thumb|right|Debut of a next generation [[Washington Metro rolling stock#7000-series|WMATA 7000-series rail car at Greenbelt Metro Station in January 2014]]
Washington Metro's rapid transit rail system serves Washington, D.C., and neighboring communities in Maryland and Northern Virginia, by operating 98 Metro stations, which includes the Greenbelt, the northern terminus of Metro's Green Line and Yellow Line. Commuter rail service to the station is provided by MARC Train's Camden Line, which connects the District of Columbia's Washington Union Station with Camden Station in Baltimore. The Camden Line provides service by utilizing the original 1835 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) track route between Washington and Baltimore, now part of the CSX System.
Metrobus, Prince George's County's THE BUS (routes 11 and 15X), and the University of Maryland's Shuttle-UM (route 143; University ID required) each have bus routes which serve the city of Greenbelt. Through a city–university partnership between 2017 and 2019, Greenbelt residents were permitted to unlimited travel on Shuttle UM, with the purchase of a $10 annual pass. The City operates limited transportation via the Greenbelt Connection, a 12-passenger wheelchair-accessible van.
Bordering areas
thumb|Scenic entry to the [[Washington, D.C.|Nation's Capital: The Baltimore–Washington Parkway]]
- Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
- Berwyn Heights
- College Park
- Goddard
- Lanham
- New Carrollton
- Glenn Dale
History
thumb|The Old Greenbelt Theatre in 2020, with a marquee referencing the [[George Floyd protests. The theatre opened on September 21, 1938, screening the film Little Miss Broadway with Shirley Temple.|alt=]]
Greenbelt was settled on September 30, 1937, as a public cooperative community in the New Deal era.
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped Tugwell lay out the Maryland town on a site that had formerly consisted largely of tobacco fields. She was also heavily involved in the first cooperative community designed by the federal government in the New Deal Era, Arthurdale, West Virginia, which sought to improve the lives of impoverished laborers by enabling them to create a self-sufficient, and relatively prosperous, cooperative community. Cooperatives in Greenbelt include the Greenbelt News Review, Greenbelt Consumers Coop grocery store, the New Deal Cafe, and the cooperative forming the downtown core of original housing, Greenbelt Homes Incorporated (GHI). Applicants for residency were interviewed and screened based on income and occupation, and willingness to become involved in community activities. African-Americans were initially excluded, but were later included by the Greenbelt Committee for Fair Housing founded in 1963, and came to account for 41% of residents, according to the 2000 census. The same census data also indicates that African-Americans are isolated in certain parts within the town, and the percentage of African-Americans within the historic area is between 0% and 5% on most blocks. Much of the federal government planned and developed portion of the city is located within the Greenbelt Historic District.
Greenbelt was the subject of the 1939 documentary film The City.
In 2021, the city created a reparations task force to study the issue of whether or not to award reparations to African-Americans in Greenbelt.