Post-World War II, America needed to rehouse returning veterans, defence workers and their families, and planners saw a renewed need for ready-made communities. This work explores the planning, design, construction and growth of one such town at Park Forest, Illinois, dubbed a "GI town". The author shows how planners drew on lessons learned from English garden cities and New Deal greenbelt towns to cope with America's emerging peacetime housing crisis. He also shows how this new town changed community planning throughout the United States, including its continuing effects on community development up to the end of the 20th century.