Who could showcase the spirit of American trust in mid-20th-century corporate capitalism more than Walt Disney? His ambition and vision propelled him to wild success at a myriad of ventures in his lifetime. One of these great ideas failed to pan out however, and you see that portrayed here. These watercolor images are mock-ups by artist Herbert Ryman, and they were showcasing Disney’s plans for a utopian American city.
American utopian communities have a long history. Disney’s plan emerged sometime in the 1950s, when Mickey’s creator had established a track record in the film industry and had the support of commercial backers at his heels for product-placement and investment opportunities.
Disney was inspired to create a model city partly because he feared that American urban places were becoming centers for crime, overcrowded, noise-ridden, and filthy. He envisioned a planned community organized around a wheel, in which the urban center would be encased in a huge clear dome to secure complete climate control. The towering central feature would be a hotel and convention center, and shops showcasing the wares and cultures from around the world would encourage visitors and the city’s 20,000 inhabitants to visit and spend money.
In Disney’s City of Tomorrow, there would be no retirement: everyone would have a job. Also there would be no ownership of property — the entire project would be managed by Disney, who would control the laws of the land. Surrounding the dense urban center, the city would have a greenbelt, and about that area, living spaces would be laid out in the shape of flower petals. Everything would be clean, and noise control would be managed by a complex public transportation system (it included a monorail but also cars, and multi-tiered — the cars would all be underground).
The City of Tomorrow died shortly after Walt in 1966, but he got pretty far — purchasing 27,433 acres (twice the size of Manhattan) the year before for only $5.1 million — he created a bunch of different real estate companies with different names to fly under the radar of landholders in Osceola County, Florida, to do it. The land of course became Walt Disney World.
Source(s): _Esquire_, “Inside Walt Disney’s Ambitious, Failed Plan to Build the City of Tomorrow,” Matt Patches, May 20, 2015.
