The Original EPCOT Project: Walt Disney's prototype community

The over-bearing central planning feel to this at first reminded me of a government and economy system that ol' Walt was probably diametrically opposed to. But then I realized it's just a futurist attempt at the Company Town [1] concept again.

Having lived near somewhere like Poundbury [2] before, it's probably no accident that the place felt like an empty theme park. While the architecture is pretty there is something soulless about the place.

As mentioned in the article, he was only a couple of months before death by lung cancer, and I think that much of the vision must have been his desire to leave some ideas bigger than rides and cartoons. I don't think the current white picket fenced retired millionaires town of Celebration is what he had in mind at all.

EDIT: I'm getting mixed up between 'Celebration' and the newer 'Golden Oaks' Disney development. Golden Oaks looks like physical VR for the wealthy. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury

[3] http://www.disneygoldenoak.com/

This type of effort has a long tradition in the United States going back to many of the original colonies which were founded to be utopias based on the religious beliefs of the founding groups. A 'city on a hill' so to speak.

I think this has much of it's roots in the European Renaissance and the European Reformation. But the roots go farther back than that. Pythagoreans attemtped to form an ideal society and the ancient Israelites left Egypt to build a new ideal, sanctified society in the Land of Canaan.

You can see the fruits of this all over America, in Zionism, and in the Tech community which envisions Silicon Valley as an Island governed by the future :). Humans just want a nice place to live? Or maybe the end result of history really will be a Utopia? ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

I love mid-century futurism. While they did get many things wrong, that's inevitable when you have big ideas and put them forward fearlessly. Whenever I read anything from that era in science, art, architecture, even philosophy, I am often struck by the boldness and fearlessness of it compared to the plodding baby-steps of today. Even today's most "radical" ideas like transhumanism, etc., are really just meek little echoes of ideas from that era.

The bold often seem foolish in retrospect when compared to the intellectually timid, since the latter get to avoid being wrong by simply not doing much of anything.

It's pretty neat to see Walt's big dreams. In implementation, I'm sure there'd be lot of little issues. For example, if everyone should have a job, where will the retired people go as they retire?

What about injured people or people with disabilities.

How will people behave if they don't own anything? Will they care about the place the same.

Regardless, a great visionary.

I read the article quite rapidly so apologies if this is mentioned, but Disney (the company) actually did launch a planned community, I think it's essentially town-sized, called Celebration. It's near to Disney world in Florida.

I visited it about 15 years ago when I believe it was still relatively new. No idea how it turned out, a brief google search reveals it still exists but I can't find anything remarkable reported about it.

Seems like a pretty interesting thing though, there must be some stories to tell. If anybody knows of anything, books or articles etc, I'd really appreciate being pointed at them.

How much of the DW success is related to the fact that they have municipal jurisdiction over the land, meaning no politic interfering on the park development?

Thank you! I have been wanting to see this EPCOT film again for many years. I saw an excerpt of it at the Walt Disney Story in Disney World in the 70's, and was disappointed at what they made of Epcot later.

It's funny, after Walt died it seemed nobody really had the vision to drive the original EPCOT plan forward, or they lacked the ability Walt had to sell the project to the difference sources of financing they needed, and perhaps were unable to sell the project to the rest of the Disney organization.

In the end Walt would have had to create a new organization that was prepared to build his vision of a new futuristic community. As it was, the existing Disney organizations were not able to do something so far beyond what they were currently doing.

When Epcot was built, the vision of the original EPCOT was swept away ... I felt like I was trying to convince people that this was not at all what Walt envisioned. But of course I was a young kid and nobody listened to me.

This was not a "company town" in the way that is being referenced in the comments. It was quite literally a prototype community where residents would only live for about a year. It was primarily funded by other companies to showcase their products and develop R&D labs. Walt's stated goal was to inspire cities around the world to develop their urban centers in this model. Before he died, he said, "I don't believe there's a challenge anywhere in the world that's more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities." Whether this design would have succeeded is the subject of much debate, though there were many elements that were radical in their time (wedway people mover, airport of the future with oval runway, tiered transportation levels).

Url changed from http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/06/26/that-time-walt-disn..., which points to this.