Columbia is a well known example of the New Town Movement in the United States. It shares similarities with Reston, VA, Woodlands, TX, Irvine, CA and others.  But it stands out in its innovative approach to planning that included a 6-month period of inter-disciplinary meetings bringing together experts in fields as diverse as education, recreation, sociology, transportation, and religion as well as architects and engineers. Columbia is also unique for its purposeful goal to be an integrated community at a time before the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it illegal to discriminate in housing based on race, color, national origin or religion.

The Exhibit Center that opened in 1967 depicted the Story of Columbia in an exhibit titled "The Next America." It was the pronouncement of the vision for a better city: a blend of the best of city and country living providing answers to problems arising from crowding in major cities and unmet needs in suburbs.

More than 40 years later Columbia is a thriving, unincorporated city of nearly 100,000 people that is by many measures one of the most successful models of new town development.     

Columbia was developed by Howard Research and Development (HRD) led by its founder James Rouse.  It grew out of Rouse’s belief that private developers could plan and build an environment that nurtured the growth of people.

Rouse had shown interest in cities and suburban sprawl through much of his career. His work with the Eisenhower Commission on Housing, The American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods (ACTION) and the Greater Baltimore Committee, as well as his business of mortgage financing and suburban shopping center development, had produced many ideas about how people live and thrive.  In a 1959 speech to the Newark Conference on the ACTION Program for the American City, he said “We must hold fast to the realization that our cities are for people and unless they work well for people they are not working well at all.  We should think and plan and program, not in terms of schools, highways, streets, stores, offices or even dwelling units; but we should begin our total plan and program with the first and fundamental purpose of making a city into neighborhoods where a man, his wife and family can live and work and, above all else, grow – grow in character, in personality, in love of God and neighbor and in the capacity for joyous living.  Isn’t this the legitimate target of our civilization?  Isn’t this the only proper target for an effective city?”

In 1961 Rouse consulted with members of the Rockefeller family on a potential community on land they owned in Pocantico Hills, New York.  The project was abandoned, but the ideas led to more concrete thinking about building a city and were realized in Cross Keys, a small, mixed-use community in Baltimore. 

By 1962 planning for Cross Keys was in full swing, and Rouse was looking ahead to something bigger – a large enough area to build a real city.  A top criteria for a site was a location between two metropolitan areas.  There were several options, including land in the Baltimore-based company’s backyard in Howard County, Maryland located mid-way between fast-growing Washington DC and Baltimore. The purchase of 1039 acres in November 1962 started a fast-paced, necessarily secretive, land acquisition. On October 30, 1963 Rouse announced to Howard County officials and residents that his company had acquired 14,000 acres and planned to build a city.