[1] Aksarben was one of the "model communities" designed in the mid-1930s by the Resettlement Administration, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal federal agencies, under the direction of Rexford G. Tugwell.

The community was intended to be a "'dream city' of thirty-eight green-shuttered houses, each on seven acres of land twenty miles west of Omaha on the Platte River."

Aksarben quickly became deserted, as Henry C. Glissman, a nearby farmer who observed this project, had predicted: "[I]n time these homes will all be abandoned and stand as a gruesome monument to a government's inefficiency and folly in fostering a movement that to a practical mind has the earmarks of failure from the start.

Several restaurants such as Jones Bros. Cupcakes,[6] Godfather's Pizza and Juice Stop have opened, as well as a bank, a Voodoo Taco, a Spirit World wine and liquor seller, a hair salon, and multiple bars and lounges.

[11] The Scott Technology Center[12] and the Peter Kiewit Institute[13] are world class educational and research facilities that partner with UNO and are located on campus.