A New Deal for California

Abstract

This essay explains the genesis and explosive growth of the online Living New Deal, an unprecedented team effort to inventory, map, and interpret the immense public works legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s work relief programs designed to extricate the United States from the Great Depression. Based at the University of California Berkeley Department of Geography, the project has both preservation and public policy components, demonstrating the many immediate and long-term benefits of Roosevelt’s stimulus programs in contrast to the damage wrought by neoliberal austerity.