Image borrowed from Waltopia.

When is a planned community too planned? Some of the exhibits displayed at the 1939 World's Fair such as Democracity and Futurama influenced many American community planners. The Levittown and Greenbelt projects followed the same guidelines of community that the 1939 World's Fair introduced. These are two of the more well known Garden City projects that took many families away from big cities and brought them to the peace and tranquility of the suburbs. On February 2nd, 1967, Walter Elias Disney announced the plans to create a domed community. This community would be known as the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow [EPCOT]. In this note, I will discuss how Walt Disney planned to create his perfect community, his Waltopia. Disney's experimental EPCOT community attempted to be the city of the future by first providing a controlled climate, second by incorporating many of the garden city concepts, and thirdly by creating a transportation system that brought people back as pedestrians. The initial plan for EPCOT was to have a city that was built in concentric circles, much like the Garden City of to-morrow that Ebenezer Howard envisioned in 1898. The city as a whole would cover over 1,000 acres of land and of that 1,000 acres 50 of them would be enclosed by a dome that created the perfect air-conditioned temperature year round. The dome that surrounded the heart of the city provided a controlled climate for all of the residents and visitors and protected them from the elements of the outside world. Not only did the dome provide protection and climate control, but it would enable authoritative control. As both a model community and a laboratory, the dome seemed designed to keep subjects of a massive experiment in controlled scenarios for research. Part of the experiment included the control of who lived in the community and how the city would look and be governed. The look of the city and the layout of the enclosed communities looked strikingly similar to past garden city projects.

Image borrowed from Waltopia.

The similarities between Disney's dream and that of Ebenezer Howard are striking. Howard's Garden city was designed in concentric circles with the center of all the circles being a large garden and park that was encircled by a "Crystal Palace." In EPCOT, rings that formed the concentric layout of the city would divide the town. The outer-most circle would consist of the most modern houses of the time, and "would perpetually be remodeled to incorporate the latest technology" (Waltopia.com, 1999). The middle ring would consist of a massive green belt that would include churches, playgrounds, and schools. The innermost ring, and the most spectacular of all would be enclosed by a dome and would provide immediate access to the center of town. The hub of the innermost ring would be accented by an enormous and modern 30-story hotel that would act as the center of commerce for the city, much like the Crystal Palace did for Ebenezer's Garden City. As with most planned communities of the time such as Levittown and the Greenbelt Programs, the community members would be selected in order to form the most ideal society as possible and isolate them from the dangers of traditional public life. As Walt Disney himself once stated, "In EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop." It seemed that Walt Disney planned to create a perfect garden city, with perfect people who lived perfect lives, but the machine that manifested itself in the form of control and authority was unavoidable. It did not seem that Disney made a strong attempt to hide the machine in his garden. His machine helped the people of the community by enabling them to commute throughout the garden with ease and efficiency.

Image borrowed from Waltopia.

The transportation system that Disney had envisioned introduced some of the streamlining technology that was displayed at the 1939 World's Fair. In order to enter the Futurama display in the General Motors building in 1939, a "moving platform" took you on a ride to the chairs that floated over the miniature city. In EPCOT this fantastic mode of transportation was taken one step further by introducing the idea of "people movers." People movers were trains or monorails that were one level above the ground that would act as a form of mass public transit. With the people movers in place, there would be practically no need for the automobile. Cars would still be present, but as Walt Disney was quoted as saying, "the automobile is there, but still put people back as pedestrians again." Transportation in EPCOT stood as a clear representation of how Walt Disney planned to change the direction that General Motors implied for society in the 1939 World's Fair. Why would you need to leave EPCOT if you had everything necessary for happiness in your own community? This idea was a very strong representation of the contradiction of two worlds of tomorrow that were envisioned. In this note, I have focused on three concepts that Walt Disney used to plan his own Utopia. The first was the concept of having a controlled climate for all citizens of the community, the second was the construction of a garden city, and the third and final was the creation of a transportation system that allowed community members to travel freely within the bounds of the community. Walt Disney's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was planned to test solutions to problems that riddled society at that time. Disney died before his planned community could ever begin construction, but as we all know EPCOT did end up being built in 1979, but for reasons other than social living. The authority and control that EPCOT represented clearly exemplified a true heterotopia. The heterotopia of EPCOT was truly intended to fix the problems that societies faced at the time by not just looking toward the future, but by living in it.

References

Howard, E. (1898/1965). Garden cities of to-morrow. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.

Waltopia. (2000, April 8 [downloaded]). The real EPCOT center. Available online: http://www.waltopia.com/.

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