Responding to the Great Depression, the New Deal of the 1930s greatly expanded the role of the United States federal government in the economy and the built environment. The Tennessee Valley Authority, created in 1933, was a federal corporation that built dams, generated electricity, controlled floods and planned the development of an entire river basin across seven states, including the model town of Norris. Allied programmes built parks, schools, roads and public buildings and, through new agencies, reshaped housing finance. The New Deal established regional, infrastructural planning as a legitimate federal activity.
The TVA was the most ambitious experiment in comprehensive regional planning in the United States, demonstrating state-led development of an entire watershed and influencing river-basin schemes worldwide.