Experiments in central planning in Florida by Disney? Nothing should surprise you any more. Glenn Beck joins Stu Burguiere to discuss the history behind Walt Disney’s experiments in central planning.
“Known as ‘EPCOT,’ an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, the idea included an urban city center, residential areas, industrial areas, schools, and a series of mass transportation systems that would connect the ‘community.'”
“The park’s name, Epcot, was previously an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a ‘utopian city” of the future planned by Walt Disney, often interchanging ‘city’ and ‘community.'” “His original vision was for a model community that would have been home to twenty thousand residents and a testbed for city planning as well as organization. It was to have been built in the shape of a circle with businesses and commercial areas at its center with community buildings, schools, and recreational complexes around it while residential neighborhoods would line the perimeter.
This radial plan concept is strongly influenced by British planner Ebenezer Howard and his Garden Cities of To-morrow.” “As no one living in EPCOT would own their own land or home, residents would have no municipal voting rights (bond issues, etc.).
Walt Disney wanted to exercise this control only to be able to change technology in homes easily.” “Sir Ebenezer Howard OBE (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, and the building of the first garden city, Letchworth Garden City, commenced in 1903.” Utopian socialism. Robert Owen would have been proud of Disney. A similar “communal setting” was also tried under a town built for the TVA. FDR at work.