Much has been made of the current recession experience as a time that rivals only the Great Depression. Already, we live in "The Great Recession." And after a stimulus in 2009 as an answer to the struggling economy, another stimulus is in the works.

Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis, makes the case that movements to advance American infrastructure, since the beginning, have been brought on by times of national crisis. But, will the current American crisis -- the Great Recession -- advance infrastructure again?

Robert Fishman, University of Michigan professor, on the role that national planning has played in shaping America's development.

A look back at the New Deal, and its projects that made America.

Blueprint America -- with American RadioWorks on public radio — looks at the new New Deal: President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure, but so did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was the first and most popular New Deal program. Millions of young men who could not find work signed up to be part of Roosevelt's "forest army." They planted trees, fought forest fires, and built trails and buildings we still use today.

The WPA was one of Roosevelt's most controversial programs. It put millions of people to work doing things like painting murals, sewing clothes, running nursery schools and serving school lunches. But most WPA workers built things. Their legacy is all around us.

The Public Works Administration left an enormous legacy of public works. PWA workers built projects in all but three counties in the United States, but many of the structures they left behind have no plaque mentioning the PWA. Americans use these structures every day without realizing where they came from.

What has often been referenced as a new New Deal, similar to initiatives instituted during the Great Depression, the following is a breakdown of federal funds from Congress' economic stimulus devoted to projects or spending that is related to or will affect infrastructure in the U.S.

U.S. mayors on December 9, 2008, called on President-elect Obama to channel infrastructure spending directly to cities rather than state governments. Consequently, there could be a problem with how infrastructure projects receive funding once the next stimulus bill is passed. However, there may be some lessons to be learned from how the New Deal was managed.

Even before the bailout, a non-partisan initiative, Building America’s Future, had already called for a similar government expansion, but in funding infrastructure projects.