Quellen:

Walt Disney Imagineering: EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow),

1967 Tomorrowland: “A world on the move”

WEDWay People Mover, “the transportation system that never stops.”

“Walts most optimistic dream was to introduce people to the benefits of future technologies- not only in theme parks but in the real world...he wanted to take his success a giant leap further by attempting to solve the problems of many cities, particularly the lack of effective transportation systems.”

Sharon Zukin: the cultures of cities Learning from Disney World pp 49

“The Disney Company is an innovator of global dimensions in the symbolic economy of technology and entertainment; it also exerts enormous influence on the symbolic economy of place in Anaheim and Orlando.”

“The World of Disney is inescapable.”

“It is the alter ego and the collective fantasy of American Society, the source of many of our myths and our self-esteem.”

“People have also learned they can derive social benefits from visual coherence. The landscape of Disney World creates a public culture of civility and security that recalls a rold long left behind. There are no guns here, no homeless people, no illegal drink or drugs. Without installing a visibly repressive political authority, Disney World imposes order an unruly, heterogeneous populations.”

“Learning from Disney World promises to make social diversity less threatening and public space more secure.”

“Moreover, the insular theme park complex suggests very strongly that a separate, smaller city can be walled off within a larger city. While Disney World is an autonomous place with its own price of admission, a walled-off real city- like a guarded residential community- promises to control the menace of strangers.”

“The fascinating point is that Disney World idealizes urban public space.”

“But cities have never been able to control space so effectively as does corporate culture.”

“The closest parallel to Disneys ambitions was the world´s fairs that were held periodically to showcase industrial products and vignettes of exotic culture from other countries, along with a utopian or monumental construction representing a coherent, socially harmonious vision of the future.”

“Corporations were identified with an optimistic control of the future.”

The Betrayal of the future: Walt Disneys EPCOT Center:

“Like Brasilia and countless other modernist projects, it was to be a community built from Scratch.”

“EPCOT is technical know-how combined with Disneys showmanship- 550 acres exploring the innovations of tomorrow and the wonders of enterprise.”

“Through special legal agreements with the state of Florida, this postindustrial infrastructure operates outside of the jurisdiction of municipal and regional laws regarding zoning, traffic, development, power and waste.”

“It´s publicity says it is dedicated to the imagination, to our fantasies and our “dreams for better tomorrows”.”

“At EPCOT we are told what the future is going to be and that it´s a hopeful one.”

“The organizing principle of the EPCOT landscape is control.”

“Amid signifiers of choice and plentitude, the Disney park reduces all possible experience to a single prescribed one.”

“What these reconstructed foreign landscapes emphasize is the function medieval and Renaissance cities continue to play as a relief from the visual monotony of modern urban society.”

Walt Disney's vision of EPCOT and The Walt Disney Company's actual new town of Celebration are two very different interpretations of the ideal city of the future. The reason for the difference is simple: People's attitudes towards urban design and architecture have changed greatly between the 1960's and the 1990's, from a social, aesthetic, and functional viewpoint. In the 1960's, a town with a megastructure core surrounded by cookie- cutter housing seemed like a great idea. If you look at the artist's rendering of Walt Disney's EPCOT, that's what you see. Walt had a vision, but it was planted in the urban planning ideals of the time.

Today, we look back longingly at pedestrian-friendly small towns, with houses that have front porches and old-fashioned architecture; and this has become the model for new towns such as Disney's Celebration.

VINYL LEAVES:

“It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses in stead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees. Everyone must be employed. One of our requirements is that people who live in EPCOT must keep it alive.”

EPCOT Movie Transcript: Right now our plans include an airport of the future (down here in Osceola County), an entrance complex where all visitors will enter Disney World, an industrial park area covering about 1000 acres, and of course, the theme park area way up here. And all these varied activities around the Disney World will be tied together with a high-speed rapid transit system running almost the full length of the property.

But the most exciting, by far the most important part of our Florida project—in fact, the heart of everything well be doing in Disney World—will be our experimental prototype city of tomorrow. We call it EPCOT, spelled E-P-C-O-T: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Here it is in larger scale.

EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing, and testing, and demonstrating new materials and new systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world of the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise. I don't believe there is a challenge anywhere in the world that's more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities.

But where do we begin? How do we start answering this great challenge? Well, we’re convinced we must start with the public need. And the need is not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community. So that's what EPCOT is: an Experimental Prototype Community that will always be in the state of becoming. It will never cease to be a living blueprint of the future where people actually live a life they can’t find anyplace else in the world. Everything in EPCOT will be dedicated to the happiness of the people who live, work, and play here, and those who come here from around the world to visit our living showcase.

We don't presume to know all the answers. In fact, we’re counting on the cooperation of American industry to provide their very best thinking during the planning and the creation of our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. And most important of all, when EPCOT has become a reality and we find the need for technologies that don’t even exist today, it’s our hope that EPCOT will stimulate American industry to develop new solutions that will meet the needs of people expressed right here in this experimental community.

Well, that's our basic philosophy for EPCOT. By now, I'm sure you're wondering how people will live and work and move around in our community of tomorrow, so in the next few minutes we will go into detail about some of our preliminary sketches and layouts. Remember though, as I said earlier, this is just the beginning! With that thought in mind, let’s have a look.

EPCOT begins with an idea new among cities built since the birth of the automobile. We call it the radial plan. Picture a wheel: like the spokes of a wheel, the city fans out along a series of radials from a bustling hub at the center of EPCOT.

A network of transportation systems radiate from the central hub carrying people to and from the heart of the city. These transportation systems circulate to and through four primary spheres of activity surrounding the central core. First, the area of business and commerce…next, the high-density apartment housing…then the broad greenbelt and recreation lands… and finally the low-density, neighborhood residential streets.

EPCOT's dynamic urban center will offer the excitement and variety of activities found only in the metropolitan cities: cultural, social, business, and entertainment.

Among its major features will be a cosmopolitan hotel and convention center towering thirty or more stories. Shopping areas where stores and whole streets recreate the character and adventure of places ‘round the world…theaters for dramatic and musical productions…restaurants and a variety of nightlife attractions. And a wide range of office buildings, some containing services required by EPCOT's residents, but most of them designed especially to suit local and regional needs of major corporations.

But most important, this entire fifty acres of city streets and buildings will be completely enclosed. In this climate-controlled environment, shoppers, theatergoers, and people just out for a stroll will enjoy ideal weather conditions, protected day and night from rain, heat and cold, and humidity.

Here the pedestrian will be king, free to walk and browse without fear of motorized vehicles. Only electric powered vehicles will travel above the streets of EPCOT's central city.

This towering motel is the visual center of EPCOT, a shining jewel at the center of the city. It will offer tourists and vacationers not only the most modern guest rooms and convention facilities, but also a seven-acre recreation deck located high above the pedestrian and shopping areas of the city.

But hidden from view, directly beneath the hotel, is another kind of vital center: EPCOT's transportation lobby. Although out of sight to hotel guests, this transportation terminal will play a key role in the City of Tomorrow's ability to meet the needs of both visitor and resident.

Two separate but interconnecting transit systems will move people into and out of EPCOT in speed, safety, and comfort through the central terminal. Both are electrically powered: the high-speed monorail for rapid transit over longer distances, and a concept new to the American City for shorter travel distances, the WEDWAY People Mover.

Automobiles and trucks will not be barred from EPCOT; in fact, a vast armada of vehicles will continuously flow through the heart of the community, traveling below the pedestrian level on roadways reserved for specific types of vehicles.

Let’s look at another view of EPCOT's transportation hub and see how traffic flows through the heart of the city on three separate levels. At the bottom of the stack is the truck route, reserved for supply vehicles. Trucks will have easy access to all loading docks and service elevators for the delivery of commercial goods.

The middle level is the automobile thruway, exclusively for cars. Adjacent to the roadway are parking areas for the convenience of hotel guests. For the motorist just driving through, no stoplight will ever slow the constant flow of traffic through the center of EPCOT.

But automobiles and freeways will not be EPCOT's major way of entering and leaving the city. The transportation heartbeat of EPCOT will be the two electric powered systems—monorail and WEDWAY—that radiate to and from the transportation lobby, and the key system in this coordinated network will be the WEDWAY People Mover.

The first People Mover installation is already in daily operation at Disneyland. On peak days, it carries nearly 40,000 passengers. The cars you see here are approximately 5/8ths scale, considerably smaller than full-sized passenger cars would be for city use.

EPCOT's People Mover is a silent, all-electric system that never stops running. These cars continue to move even while passengers are disembarking or stepping aboard. Power is supplied through a series of motors embedded in the track, completely independent of the cars. No single car can ever break down and cause a rush hour traffic jam in EPCOT. Because the cars run continuously, there will be no waiting in stations for the WEDWAY People Mover; the next car is always ready. Now let’s go back to the Transportation Lobby and see how the WEDWAY will travel along one radial between the center of EPCOT and a typical residential area.

Leaving the Transportation Lobby, the WEDWAY trains travel above the downtown streets. Within minutes, the WEDWAY passes through the first station. Many people who work in the offices and stores of EPCOT's city center board the WEDWAY here for their trip home. Some people leave the WEDWAY here, too: they live in EPCOT's high-density apartments surrounding the metropolitan center.

Most passengers who ride the WEDWAY live beyond the apartments and stay aboard the People Mover as it crosses EPCOT's sheltering greenbelt.

EPCOT's greenbelt is more than just a broad expanse of beautiful lawns and walks and trees. Here too are the communities’ varied recreation facilities, its playgrounds for children, its churches, and its schools. Beyond the greenbelt are EPCOT's neighborhood areas of single-family homes. This [pictured in the film] is one radial neighborhood. Here and throughout the community, residents returning from work or shopping will disembark from the WEDWAY at stations located conveniently just a few steps from where they live.

The homes are located in a wide green area that provides light recreation activities for adults and play areas for children. Circulating through this area are footpaths reserved for pedestrians, electric carts, and bicycles. Children going to and from schools and playgrounds will use these paths, always completely safe and separated from the automobile.

The resident leaving home in his automobile will drive down a street reserved for motor vehicles. He then enters a one-way road that circles the city center. This road carries the motorist onto the main throughway connecting EPCOT with other points in Disney World and with Florida's nearby network of major highways. But most EPCOT residents will drive their automobiles only on weekend pleasure trips. From all over the community residents going to their jobs converge by WEDWAY on the Center City. Many work downtown in offices, stores, and shops, but most employees go beyond the city core to their jobs. From the Transportation Lobby, monorail trains carry employees either to the theme park or to EPCOT's one thousand-acre industrial park.

At this central station in the industrial complex, passengers disembark from the monorail and again board WEDWAY cars that radiate through each facility. This industrial complex will provide employment for many people who live in EPCOT. But it will mean much more, not only for this community but also for American industry. Here the Disney staff will work with individual companies to create a showcase of industry at work.

In attractive park-like settings, the six million people who visit Disney World each year will look behind the scenes at experimental prototype plants, research and development laboratories, and computer centers for major corporations.

So this is EPCOT, the heart of Disney World. In other parts of the country, a community the size of this prototype could become part of an entire city complex composed of many such communities, planned and built a few miles apart. In Disney World, about 20,000 people will actually live in EPCOT. Their homes will be built in ways that permit ease of change so that new products may continuously be demonstrated. Their schools will welcome new ideas so that everyone who grows up in EPCOT will have skills in pace with today's world. EPCOT will be a working community with employment for all. And everyone who lives here will have a responsibility to help keep this community an exciting living blueprint of the future.

Walt: That's the starting point for our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. And now, where do we go from these preliminary plans and sketches? Well, a project like this is so vast in scope that no one company alone could make it a reality. But if we can bring together the technical know-how of American industry and the creative imagination of the Disney organization, I'm confident we can create—right here in Disney World—a showcase to the world of the American free enterprise system. I believe we can build a community that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world. And with your cooperation, I’m sure that the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come. It’s an exciting challenge; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone who participates. Speaking for myself and the entire Disney organization, we’re ready to go right now!