You may not realize this, but the 21st century began not with a countdown to midnight at the tail-end of 1999, amidst a minor panic over the impending Y2K doomsday. No, it actually began in October of 1982 - or at least that’s what The Walt Disney Company once purported to be the case. 35 Years ago, Disney unveiled their biggest and riskiest venture to date (it feels like I say that a lot, however it may be more true here than one realizes,) with the opening of EPCOT Center, their first theme park without a castle. To further differentiate it from it’s Fantasyland brethren, at the time of opening it also sported no thrill rides, no costumed Disney characters, and readily-available alcohol and fine dining. Massive beyond even the scale of the outsized Magic Kingdom just a monorail ride away, here was something completely unique, for Disney and indeed the entire world - mature, educational, thematically dense, entertaining, inspirational - a spectacle beyond all else that celebrated the achievements of humanity by looking back at where we’ve been and forward to where we could be headed in the future. Those lucky enough to visit this city on a hill in it’s original iteration left inspired and in awe of what they’d experienced - at least when all the rides were working. And yet there was (and still is, to a lesser extent) a vocal minority who felt that what they were given was a blasphemy to the name of Disney; for them, what had been created was not what had been promised.
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| The man with a plan (sort of) |
For those who don’t know the whole tangled history of EPCOT Center (later to be shortened to simply ‘Epcot’ - more about that in Pt. 3,) let’s go back to the early 1960s. Walt Disney was known not to be one for repeating past successes, and therefore had little interest in creating a “Disneyland 2.” This was despite the wishes of others within the company, as well as parades of representatives from across the United States (and abroad) who wanted a repeat of the financial windfall that had befallen Anaheim for their own cities. However, since the opening of his “little park surrounded by a railroad,” one thing had gnawed away at Walt’s mind: the glut of cheap, tacky gift shops and motels that had quickly set up shop just steps away from his Southern California wonderland. Added to his perception of the physical and societal deterioration occurring in America’s cities (at least from his increasingly conservative point-of-view,) Walt had a spark of inspiration: why not turn the Disney company’s resources toward a loftier goal than simple entertainment - that of creating a fully-functioning city? He immersed himself in writings about city planning (such as Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 work Garden Cities of To-morrow,) and set his Imagineers to work creating concepts for a self-contained city, utilizing the lessons learned about urban design and land management from building and operating Disneyland. Walt was over the moon for the idea of creating a fully-functional “city of tomorrow,” a company-owned community employing the newest ideas for construction, mass-transit and experimental technologies. Planned as a “living model” more than an autonomous municipality (the roughly worked-out idea being that the residents would rotate in and out on a tenant basis,) he soon hit upon the perfect acronym for his vision: E.P.C.O.T. - the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
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| Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, soon after Disneyland's opening |
The entire conception of what would become Walt Disney World was based almost solely upon Walt’s burgeoning plans for E.P.C.O.T. Disney sought to purchase as much land as possible within their chosen site outside Orlando, both to accommodate all future plans for the city and it’s neighboring "industrial section," and to leave intrusions from the outside world as far away as possible. While the desired land was being procured, Walt worked feverishly with his Imagineers at WED Enterprises, creating further plans and concepts for E.P.C.O.T., as well as for the massive undertaking necessary in turning the miles of Floridian swamp into usable land. That the Disney World property would include a new theme park, the Magic Kingdom, as part of the deal was a foregone conclusion - but Walt left the design and planning of the park to a team of (more than) capable Imagineers, focusing his energy on E.P.C.O.T.
Soon, the cat was out of the bag that it was Disney that had discreetly bought up so much land. A few hastily-arranged press conferences followed, in which Walt revealed that they were planning a vast entertainment complex with a “city of the future” within. He even went to the trouble of having a 25-minute presentation film made, showcasing the concept art for “The Disney World project,” as well as his plans for E.P.C.O.T. (two versions were actually made - one for showing to the public and one made for possible corporate partners - which you can watch here - since Walt felt the project would require assistance from other US industries.) Wowed by artist Herb Ryman’s evocative paintings of a futuristic, radially-designed city with a multi-story resort hotel at it's center, many in the press and the public naturally couldn’t wait to see what the beloved company and it’s head wizard would come up with. Unfortunately for them, Walt went and died before any serious work began on his “city of tomorrow.” The E.P.C.O.T. film turned out to be the very last filmed appearance of the world-renowned storyteller.
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| The paining that haunted a company for decades |
Walt Disney Productions, a ship sailing through uncharted waters, was now suddenly without it’s captain. With no completed map left to follow, it was left to brother Roy and the Imagineers to decide what course should be taken. While work ploughed ahead to finish “Phase 1,” work on Walt’s E.P.C.O.T. concept was pushed aside. Following the opening of “The Vacation Kingdom,” work slowly picked back up on the Community of Tomorrow. Before long, the realization came that without Walt’s guidance (and ability to sweet-talk other corporations into sharing their ideas and technologies) there was no realistic way to make his not-fully-thought-out dream come to life as originally planned. Quietly, the “city of tomorrow” concept was allowed to die.
Not wanting to let the idea of Walt’s final project fizzle out completely, his disciples were left to ponder what other possibilities could be used to bring some kind of workable concept to life. Many ideas were bandied about, the most sensible being splitting the “city” into a pair of separate world’s fair-style districts within the Florida property: one an international shopping and cultural center, the other a futuristic campus for scientific discussion and technological education. Faced with few corporate sponsors and even fewer foreign governments willing to participate in the separate ventures (especially now that a “city of the future” was nowhere to be seen,) one day Imagineer John Hench (with assistance from Marty Sklar, at least according to him) pushed the models for the “World Showcase” and the “Future World Center” together. From this point on, work began in earnest on what was soon dubbed EPCOT Center - the thought being that this new “theme center” would be the focal point to learn about various humanistic topics, celebrate world cultures, and to discuss projects related to “the spirit of EPCOT” already in place around property.
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| Early concept for World Showcase - adjacent to the Seven Seas Lagoon |
In doing this, Disney, which had been alluding to Walt’s city as a project "in the works" for years, slyly made the somewhat incredible declaration that Walt Disney World - the entire 43 square-mile property - was itself EPCOT. That’s right folks - that painting you remember seeing, with the gleaming tower sticking up from an enclosed city-center, has already existed as a mostly undeveloped-looking woodland you whiz by on your way to the Magic Kingdom’s parking lot! While it’s certainly true that many of the advancements and practices put into use at Disney World are ones that would be utilized in a “city of tomorrow” - beyond the use of the monorail system as viable mass-transit, there was a pneumatic-tube trash collection system that evacuates all waste to a central clean-burning energy plant, and underground “utilidors” that run beneath the Magic Kingdom (allowing for speedy cast member transport, as well as easy access to utility services.) These, however, are mostly out-of-view infrastructural elements that serve the opposite purpose of a "model city."
For better or for worse, the reality was that by the late 1970s attempting to create a real working “city of the future” made far less sense (and undoubtedly fewer cents) than creating a second theme park under the Florida sun. But my goodness, what a park they made. We’ll get to EPCOT Center as built in the next article.
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| EPCOT Center entrance plaza concept art |
Before we close, however, let’s attempt to address the $64,000 question: could Walt Disney’s E.P.C.O.T. have worked? It’s a complicated question, really. Do I personally think he could’ve gotten it built? Yes. If any one man could’ve made it happen - and I think only one man could’ve - it was Walt Disney. I imagine the finished cityscape would’ve differed significantly from the well-known concept painting and subsequent model made for display in the Carousel of Progress post-show (which can now be seen on the Magic Kingdom’s PeopleMover attraction, by the way.) On the other hand, that Walt was counting on the participation of several different major companies, not just for sponsorship but actual participation in a sort of “American industry think-tank,” seems naïve. It’s extremely unlikely (to put it mildly) that, in a capitalist society, a bunch of corporations would freely and gladly share their plans and most high-profile R&D projects with the rest of the world (including a steady stream of curious tourists,) when their very life-blood depends on keeping their “latest thing” under wraps as long as possible.
The bigger question, though, is would it have worked? Not even thinking about whether or not the “model city” could’ve been expanded or copied to any real-world townships, I feel that the answer is a resounding No. The thing that always seems to be left out whenever fans bemoan that the Disney company “never realized Walt’s dream” of a utopian city is the all-important human factor. In theory, a clean and technologically advanced city, in which everyone works toward a singular goal of maintaining and improving the community would be a great thing. Co-operative neighborhoods and towns have proven to work well in many areas, so why couldn’t it in this case? The whole problem is the fact that E.P.C.O.T. would’ve been a city owned by a corporation, in which residents are merely “passing through” for a year or so. Packing up one’s entire life and family, just to have the opportunity to spend a blink-and-it’s-gone year within Walt’s futuristic city is really asking a lot. Hell, the whole idea of short-time residency arose solely for the reason that it would prevent anyone from having the power to vote, therefore removing the possibility of residents challenging the company’s - and by extension, Walt’s - ideas on how things should be run.
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| Building the future |
It seems one would’ve had to have sacrificed some easily taken-for-granted freedoms just for this privilege. One of the points alluded to in Walt’s “E.P.C.O.T. film” was that all of your “modern conveniences” would be regularly upgraded and replaced, to better showcase the continuing advancements and ingenuity of American industry. That sounds okay, but just imagine coming home from work one day to find that all of your appliances, or your furniture, or your wallpaper (none of which you own, by the way) has been switched out with all new, all unfamiliar items. What if you really liked your old toaster, and didn’t want a different one? Beyond material goods, what about spiritual matters? The film also makes mention that the city would contain a number of “churches” in addition to housing and commerce. What sort of churches? How many? Should Uncle Walt and his Wasp cohorts be trusted to populate the small city with enough locations to cover all denominations? Will there be more than a token synagogue? A single mosque? I’m not a person of faith myself, but if I was I couldn’t imagine being without proper access to a place of worship for a year.
Additionally, the running assumption was that the residents of E.P.C.O.T. would mostly be working somewhere within the Disney World property - either for Disney (at the theme park, the resort hotels, within E.P.C.O.T. itself or elsewhere) or for one of the partnering corporations in the adjacent “industrial section.” The thought behind this was that everyone living in the city would all have a stake in keeping it vibrant and well maintained. So right off the bat, anyone who wanted to live within E.P.C.O.T. would almost have to be an employee of Disney, or at least one of the other participating companies on-site (though, as noted earlier, it’s unlikely that there would’ve been many willing companies taking part anyway.) The entire set-up of the proposed city, in which PeopleMovers would transport workers from the “residential sections” to their places of work or to a central monorail station for transport elsewhere on property, is based on a worker-centric “company town” concept. Sure, the single-family households proposed for the edges of the city all featured garages (all roads were in a “perimeter configuration,” leaving pedestrian paths centralized - no need to worry about little Jimmy getting run over while playing outside,) but it seems unlikely that anyone would want to pack up and move away from their current homes, presumably already close to their places of work, if they’d have to commute further to get to an off-site job for a year. It also seems unlikely that Disney, the ultimate decider of who would be suitable to live within their city, would select non-employees over those who work for them (and ultimately would have the company’s best interest in mind, since it would affect their own well-being.)
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| Walt Disney World Preview Center Hostesses, c. 1970 |
Here we get to another, somewhat more disturbing notion. You see, in the real world, people are messy. They can be unreliable, do stupid things, make decisions based on greed and endanger themselves and others. While I do feel (believe it or not) that humanity, as a whole, is good and honest, and wants to move toward a better future, it doesn’t always act like it; humanity stumbles just as often as it soars. Since the opening of Disneyland, Disney was known for hiring not only the best and brightest young workforce for it’s public face, but also the most beautiful. If we’re being honest, Disney’s hiring practices by the late ‘60s and early ‘70s would likely be illegal today. The company byline was hiring for roles, rather than simply filling positions, hiring freckled redheads for Frontierland and tall blondes for Tomorrowland, for example. Why then would we expect their methods for selecting “suitable residents” for their “city of tomorrow” to be any different? How would the selection process have gone, exactly?
Assuming that more than a lot of people would’ve been willing to drop their lives and send in an application (or whatever) for residency within E.P.C.O.T., how far would the qualifications have gone? Would Walt or his colleagues have looked at income? At criminal histories? At library records? Would they have considered how physically attractive you or your family appeared to them? Would residence selections (and, while we’re thinking about it, specific housing placement) be determined at random, or by some secret social or economic factor? Or by race? At best it would be like an HOA gone mad, and (not to sound too sensational) at worst like a dictatorship. Any residency or home ownership contract obviously has to go through one or more systems of approval, but at what point does weeding out someone's idea of an “undesirable element” go too far? And who would give a business, and more specifically the head of a corporation, that kind of power, no matter how well-meaning or benevolent he may appear? What the hell would give him the right?
We could discuss the pro’s and con’s of a Disney-controlled metropolis indefinitely (well, at least I could,) but it’s all a moot point anyhow. For now let’s leave the past behind us, and tune in next time for a look at the "present" of October 1982, and the opening celebration of the wondrous achievement a Walt-less Disney made instead of a "city of the future." Hooray for the 21st century!
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