The notion of planning entire communities prior to their construction is an ancient one. In fact, one of the earliest such city on record is Miletus, Greece, which was built in the 4th century BC. Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, various planned communities (both theoretical and actual) were conceived. Leonardo da Vinci designed several cities that were never constructed. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, the architect Christopher Wren created a new master plan for the city, incorporating park land and urban space. Several 18th-century cities, including Washington D.C., New York City, and St Petersburg, Russia, were built according to comprehensive planning.

One of the most important planned city concepts, the Garden City Movement, arose in the latter part of the 19th century as a reaction to the pollution and crowding of the Industrial Revolution. In 1898, Ebenezer Howard published the book To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in which he laid out his ideas concerning the creation of new economically viable towns. Howard believed that these towns should be limited in size and density, and surrounded with a belt of undeveloped land. The idea gained enough attention and financial backing to lead to the creation of Letchworth, in Hertfordshire, England. This was the first such 'Garden City'. After the First World War, the second town built following Howard's ideas, Welwyn Garden City,  was constructed.

In the early 1920s, American architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, inspired by Howard's ideas and the success of Letchworth and Welwyn, created the city of Radburn, New Jersey. Conceived as a community which would be safe for children, Radburn was intentionally designed so that the residents would not require automobiles. Several urban planning designs were pioneered at Radburn that would influence later planned communities, including the separation of pedestrians and vehicles, and the use of 'superblocks', each of which shared 23 acres of commonly held parkland.

In America, following the stock market crash of 1929, there was great demand for both affordable housing and employment for workers who had lost their jobs. In direct response to this, in 1935 President Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration, which brought about a total of three greenbelt towns: Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. These towns contained many of the elements of the Garden City Movement developments, including the use of superblocks and a 'green belt' of undeveloped land surrounding the community.