Yeah, Walt - the capitalist old man he was - hated the urban sprawl of post-war america and of course, had a life-long fetish for the idealized version of Marceline and Kansas City where he spent his childhood. Building EPCOT was the only real reason he even decided to do Disney World - since there was a large amount of land up for sale in Central Florida -- more than enough to build your own town and then get the local government to give you near full jurisdiction over everything within its borders.
I think, if he had managed to live long enough to see it through - it probably would've been a short-lived community, especially since Walt wanted:
Private companies like RCA and GE to have headquarters there and also employ a lot of the residents. On top of that, those companies would be constantly updating hardware/appliances/etc in the homes since Walt wanted the companies to literally use the residents to test their prototype products in their homes.
Everyone would be employed. Walt's idea was that residents were to move out when they reached retirement age (or got fired/laid off, I guess).
It to literally be contained within a climate controlled dome like some shit out of Biodome.
There would be no local government/direct democracy/etc. Walt wanted to quite literally lord over a bunch of people until his lawyers were like "yeah no that's not gonna work".
And more I'm probably forgetting. The transportation system (having layers of peoplemovers/monorails underneath the city) is genuinely cool though and parts of it even survived past Walt's death (and his brother's smart business pivot towards focusing on the actual theme parks) in the form of the Utilidor system - nine acres of underground (technically they're ground-level, Disney just built the actual park atop them) tunnels that stretch through the Magic Kingdom (and some parts of Epcot) in WDW; which is how cast-members get into and around the park without being seen in costume, how trash is picked up and taken out of the park, and even how cash/food/etc deliveries and pick-ups from the stores inside the park are handled. A shame they didn't include the monorails for cast members to navigate around, instead of making them walk or ride golf-carts though.
EPCOT was always my favorite area of WDW as a kid, the couple of times we went on vacations there, because it really did seem like it was focused less on the "hey we know you're here to see our IPs, here's your $50 t-shirt thanks" and more on "humanity may achieve great things, if we work together". Spaceship Earth still gets me as an adult, the last time my parents forced us out there, even though you're still forced to walk the abysmal Siemens sponsor exhibit, which is a bunch of out-dated technology like a shit racing game. (Honestly bar Figment's Journey through Imagination, it's the ride that, if I ever do decide to spend an unfathomable amount of money to go back to DisneyWorld for whatever reason - I hope has gotten an update it deserves by then.)
Anyways, here's Walt himself talking about EPCOT . Also highly recommend Defunctland's episode on it (and really his entire channel) if you have 50 minutes to spare and want to hear a classic tale of Walt Disney not understanding his employees were people too.
You may now cancel me for spending 15 minutes on a reply about Walt Disney
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Yeah, Walt - the capitalist old man he was - hated the urban sprawl of post-war america and of course, had a life-long fetish for the idealized version of Marceline and Kansas City where he spent his childhood. Building EPCOT was the only real reason he even decided to do Disney World - since there was a large amount of land up for sale in Central Florida -- more than enough to build your own town and then get the local government to give you near full jurisdiction over everything within its borders.
I think, if he had managed to live long enough to see it through - it probably would've been a short-lived community, especially since Walt wanted:
And more I'm probably forgetting. The transportation system (having layers of peoplemovers/monorails underneath the city) is genuinely cool though and parts of it even survived past Walt's death (and his brother's smart business pivot towards focusing on the actual theme parks) in the form of the Utilidor system - nine acres of underground (technically they're ground-level, Disney just built the actual park atop them) tunnels that stretch through the Magic Kingdom (and some parts of Epcot) in WDW; which is how cast-members get into and around the park without being seen in costume, how trash is picked up and taken out of the park, and even how cash/food/etc deliveries and pick-ups from the stores inside the park are handled. A shame they didn't include the monorails for cast members to navigate around, instead of making them walk or ride golf-carts though.
EPCOT was always my favorite area of WDW as a kid, the couple of times we went on vacations there, because it really did seem like it was focused less on the "hey we know you're here to see our IPs, here's your $50 t-shirt thanks" and more on "humanity may achieve great things, if we work together". Spaceship Earth still gets me as an adult, the last time my parents forced us out there, even though you're still forced to walk the abysmal Siemens sponsor exhibit, which is a bunch of out-dated technology like a shit racing game. (Honestly bar Figment's Journey through Imagination, it's the ride that, if I ever do decide to spend an unfathomable amount of money to go back to DisneyWorld for whatever reason - I hope has gotten an update it deserves by then.)
Anyways, here's Walt himself talking about EPCOT . Also highly recommend Defunctland's episode on it (and really his entire channel) if you have 50 minutes to spare and want to hear a classic tale of Walt Disney not understanding his employees were people too.
You may now cancel me for spending 15 minutes on a reply about Walt Disney
deleted by creator
deleted by creator