My friend, Elon Musk, sent me this as a reminder:
In his later years, film-maker Walt Disney became obsessed with futurism, and in particular how cities should be designed.
He tried to bring his ideas to fruition in the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). His community was intended to be a carefully designed city, with a population of 20,000. The city would incorporate all the newest technologies, and would change constantly in a bid to test and discover the best way for a city to be.
Disney’s dream was never realised. He struggled to find financial backing, and his company’s board saw little profit in it. The Epcot theme park at Disney World that was eventually built is devoted to technology and world cultures, but bears little resemblance to Disney’s imagined utopia.
The financial & financial wrangling around EPCOT were short-sighted and foolish. Yet somehow much of those aspects of futurism inteded for WDW DID end up being used in the surrounding Orlando communities, and what remained of the Aerospace industry nearby.
Also, the core foundation of the American Rapid Response forces resides within a stones throw of Orlando too.
Future thinkers live & work nearby, just not within the confines of the corporation-twisted remnants of EPCOT. So there is a positive shadow to Walt’s dream.
At the same time of EPCOT’s initial failure, the wonderfully well designed Alt Erlaa in Austria was built, and has continued to be a successful example of ecological AND economical success.
Perhaps some of the failures of both is more poor reporting than inability to apply the technology.
There is anecdotal evidence that Walt Disney’s father, a worker who labored on the ‘White City’ at the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893, inspired his young son’s utopian vision by descriptions of the grandiose project and its promise for a brighter future.
As a technophile, Walt was always driven by curiosity and idealism. Community planning was a natural extension of his interest in how people interact with their technological environment. While he may have been a somewhat narrow-minded social engineer, Walt’s EPCOT, as conceived, should be admired as one on the 20th century’s great reach-out programs.