Tennessee Valley Authority
Article
Tennessee Valley Authority is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 19, 2023 and June 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program”; “In the US, the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program to develop a poor region using federal government money”; “The Tennessee Valley Authority is the canonical example of a New Deal agency”. It most often appears alongside Jacobs, Jane Jacobs, 1965.
Metadata
- Category: Organizations
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: May 19, 2023
- Last seen: June 23, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Jacobs (2 shared issues)
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- Jane Jacobs (2 shared issues)
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- 1965 (1 shared issues)
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- 1968 Summer Olympics (1 shared issues)
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- 1980 (1 shared issues)
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- 1980 referendum (1 shared issues)
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- 1995 referendum (1 shared issues)
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- 2000 election (1 shared issues)
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- 2023 book review contest (1 shared issues)
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- A.W. Phillips (1 shared issues)
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- Adam Smith (1 shared issues)
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- Alberta (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Finally, an oversized capital force creates an artificial city region. In the US, the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program to develop a poor region using federal government money. The hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure that the money bought seemed to be great successes at first, and to be sure they did reduce poverty. But problems later appeared, and today the region isn’t particularly dynamic, in addition to being riddled with environmental issues. Jacobs explains that the federal aid could never truly help, because the Tennessee Valley has always lacked an import-replacing city. Subsidies, grants, and loans give at best the illusion of development.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is the canonical example of a New Deal agency. Founded in 1933, it was designed to modernize the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley2, with a broad mandate including electricity generation, flood control, fertilizer manufacturing, and general economic development. Here’s what it didn’t have to do: run its plans for the valley by any of the people who actually lived there. Although the TVA was broadly popular and is still considered a success today, its development plans displaced over 125,000 residents, who had essentially no recourse. Its first leader, displaying the lack of modesty that was characteristic of the era, described the agency’s work by saying, “What God had made one, man was to develop as one.”
Inline links: 2