杏吧原创

GO TO Disneyland in California, the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Florida, Disney Tokyo, or EuroDisney outside Paris, and you will find that there is only one entrance 鈥� under the station of the old-fashioned, steam railway.

From here you pass through a town square and down the Main Street of a nostalgic recreation of a 19th-century American town. The detail of the town is lavish: the names of the lawyers and accountants are written in gilt on the second-storey windows, the horse-drawn trolley car still trundles down the middle of the street and the ice-cream parlour has ceiling fans that slowly turn above your head. The town could be the backdrop for any number of American musicals 鈥� or perhaps it is Marceline, Missouri, the little town where Walt Disney spent the difficult years of his boyhood, finally made perfect.

This was Walt Disney鈥檚 deepest dream: he wanted to build a town. But while everything he built was designed that way, these miniature towns of Disneyland or even the later creations of Disney/MGM Studios were not enough to satisfy Walt鈥檚 longing. When he opened the gates to Disneyland and its Main Street in 1955, he knew it had a flaw: nobody actually lived there. He wanted to build a place where people lived, a place that could make life about as good as it could be, perhaps as a way to reinvent his own childhood.

By 1959, he had two main ideas on the go: choosing a site for a second theme park and planning how to build a futuristic 鈥淐ity of Tomorrow鈥� around it, where the park鈥檚 workers could live in an ideal society.

Now, some two generations later, a somewhat different version of Walt鈥檚 dream town is finally rising from the swamps, bush palm and pine scrub of Florida. Bulldozers and steelworkers 鈥� as well as software engineers, education planners and health futurists 鈥� are building a $350 million 鈥渂ack to the future鈥� town called Celebration.

A unique blend of the old and the new, Celebration will combine deep porches and fibre optics, the old swimming hole and terabyte broadband networks, a rosy vision of the past and an optimistic reach toward the future. 鈥淚magine how great it would have been,鈥� says one promotional sign, 鈥渢o live fifty years ago with all the neat gear you have today.鈥�

The road from Walt鈥檚 dream to Celebration is long, and filled with false starts and detours. In 1966, the months before he died, Disney became obsessed with his dream city. Through agents using assumed names so as not to drive up the price of the land, the company bought nearly 50 square miles of land near Orlando, Florida. The second Magic Kingdom to be built there was to take up only a tiny part of the vast reaches of forest, pastures and swamps 鈥� and only a tiny corner of Walt鈥檚 attention.

鈥淲e already know how to build a theme park,鈥� he would say. So instead he read obsessively about cities and the history of planned communities. He commissioned economic studies and architectural drawings in his bid to create the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, EPCOT.

The vision seemed to combine a nature reserve with minimalism. There were to be glittering blade-like buildings, monorails, moving pavements, centralised computer control, and soaring roadways enclosed by a giant climate-control dome. He talked repeatedly about his urge for a human-centred life (鈥淚 believe that people still want to live like human beings鈥�) and his distrust of the effect of the car on town life.

Yet the sketchy plans also revealed his faith in the healing power of technology. He was, it would turn out, one of the last great believers in Progress, that 鈥渘ew鈥� is 鈥渂etter鈥� and that technological advances really can improve the quality of life.

Delayed dream

His death in December 1966 left the company in a quandary. The directors of Disney did, indeed, know how to build a theme park, and by October 1971 they had opened the Magic Kingdom on the Orlando property, which was now dubbed Walt Disney World. But a living community was something else again.

The public was expecting some wild new thing called EPCOT. The company considered building a town, but instead bult a permanent World Fair with science exhibits and a cultural Showcase of Nations with their local food and crafts set around a lake 鈥� and this is what became EPCOT. It opened in 1982, without real residents.

In 1984, Roy Disney junior, Walt鈥檚 nephew, took over the company. He appointed Michael Eisner as chief executive officer, and within a few years The Walt Disney Company was bringing in healthy profits from a string of film and merchandising successes. By 1987, the time was right for Peter Rummell, President of Walt Disney Design and Development, to suggest taking Walt鈥檚 old dream of building a real community off the shelf.

Rummell had little difficulty winning Eisner鈥檚 support, since he turned out to be both an amateur futurist and an architecture expert. Eisner set up a series of meetings with top planners and architects 鈥� including Michael Graves, who designed the company鈥檚 postmodern headquarters complete with columns in the shape of the Seven Dwarfs, and Robert Stern, who designed several of the Disney hotels in the US and Europe. He also worked with James Rouse, the man who planned the city of Columbia, Maryland, in the 1950s and who also shared many ideas with Walt.

In 1990, the Disney team invited Charles Adams from Trammell Crow, one of America鈥檚 largest developers, to join the company. His task was to work out the financing for the project, discuss ideas with potential customers and investigate problems with local zoning rules (rules which in the US dictate everything from the proper width of streets and the size of fire hydrants to the placement of retail businesses, industries and different classes of residences).

By early 1992, the team had a master plan. They had gathered photographs showing old houses, downtown areas, parks and lakes that captured some sense of what urban life could be like.

Now, they have started to turn these images into a community. The bulldozers are pushing the bush palm, bald cypress and pine into piles, which are then burnt under the gusts of enormous tubular fans. The downtown area is rising around a lake, the streets are laid out and paved, the pipes and cables for electricity, gas and communications are installed, and the bare plots on which the residents will build the first 350 homes are marked out with tiny plastic flags on wooden sticks.

Closer to the highway, two handsome postmodern office buildings designed by Aldo Rossi, nine stories and four storeys high, sit back beyond broad, perfect lawns, around a 12-metre pyramidal pylon. To one side is a curiously Disneyesque touch 鈥� what looks like a jumble of elegant, old-fashioned houses. Close up, they are not houses, but a clever piece of trompe l鈥檕eil -billboards hiding four trailers pushed together to form a preview centre where potential buyers can look over an enormous model of the town, examine the planners鈥� ideas for the health centre or the school, and leaf through architects鈥� pattern books for the houses themselves.

Some 20 000 people trooped through the preview centre in the first month it was open. The interest is no surprise. As Rouse put it approvingly, 鈥淲hat they are doing is much more intensive, much more sensitive, and much more searching than what is occurring generally in the planning and development of urban life.鈥�

The Disney team has given over 5000 acres to the project, which winds through an additional 4600 acres of 鈥済reenbelt鈥� or 鈥渨ilderness area鈥� which under law must be left as swamp and forest. The first houses, which should be ready next summer, will be home to some 1000 people. Eventually, Celebration is expected to have around 8000 homes and a population of 20 000 鈥� the classic American small town.

Walt would have been proud. But he might also have been surprised. The town does not look futuristic at all 鈥� there are no soaring buildings, no monorails, people-movers or swooping elevated roadways, and no climate-control dome. Instead, the look of the overall planning is determinedly pre-Second World War, from the apartments over the high-street shops to the large homes around the golf course. The inhabitants will build their houses to suit themselves, but the homes will take their designs from a style book featuring a variety of popular prewar styles, such as Greek Revival, Victorian and Country French.

Sense of intimacy

Compared with many modern American towns, the differences are striking. The plots of land set aside for homes are small: some free-stranding home plots are only 12 metres across and townhouse plots only 7.5 metres. The streets are narrow 鈥� the major routes into the town are a little over 10 metres across and many of the residential streets measure no more than 6 metres. The aim is to create a greater sense of intimacy in neighbourhoods and to shift the focus away from the car toward walking.

Most of the houses have porches broad enough to actually sit on in the warm Florida evenings. All have alleys behind them to keep the cars people will inevitably own and the rubbish bins hidden away. The town plan is strewn with walkways, cycle paths and small parks just big enough to toss around a ball or sit on a bench with the morning paper. 鈥淲e think of them more as shared front yards,鈥� says the Celebration Company鈥檚 Chris Corr. 鈥淥ur assumption is that people crave community.鈥�

Clustered around a lake is a small downtown area, with buildings that vary. Like the buildings of a conventional town, the bank, designed by Robert Venturi, is a sober-looking block, while Cesar Pelli鈥檚 cinema has a touch of Fifties futurism. In fact, it鈥檚 only part of Celebration that looks anything like Walt鈥檚 City of the Future.

But while the skin of Celebration may be old-fashioned, warm and huggable, under the skin the nerves are new, and they are powerful. Underground, it鈥檚 the millenium. Look carefully at the plots set aside for house building and there are some hints in the pipes that emerge from the ground.

There are the expected sewer connections, fresh water pipes, gas pipes and electrical cables. But there is also the purple pipe for recycled water especially laid on so that Celebration鈥檚 residents can water their lawns with a clear conscience. The last pipe is the information cable. The entire village is wired. Fibre-optic cable is laid on to every blodk and broadband coaxial cable to every door.

Friendly network

And this is for far more than mere cable services: in a small building downtown AT&T is installing a broadband server and a series of switches that will allow every citizen mot just to call a friend, watch cable television, download movies and order pizza, but to provide information as well 鈥� arrange garden clubs, for instance, or town meetings. It will also provide a forum for people to discuss baseball games and homework, and to swap recipes and gossip, or browse the shelves at the library. The network will be owned and run by Vista-United Telecommunications, the Disney subsidiary that is Walt Disney World鈥檚 phone company. It will be built by AT&T and Broadband Technologies (BBT).

AT&T will provide its SLC-2000 SONET access system 鈥� the digital switches at the heart of the network 鈥� and the telephone interface. BBT will provide its FLX SDV 鈥渙ptical transport system鈥� which will move the high-bandwidth video and multimedia down the fibre-optic cable. The central office will have two host digital terminals, each a staggering 2-terabyte Silion Graphics workstation. From there, fibres will branch out through the town to optical network units, each one linking some 16 households.

And there in the network units the pulses of laser light are turned back into electrical pulses, with telephone conversations shunted into normal copper twisted pair wires for the rest of the run to the household, high-speed data into an ISDN line, and cable television and other broadband multimedia signals into a coaxial cable.

AT&T鈥檚 project managers describe the bandwidth that will be available as 鈥渦nlimited鈥� 鈥� they will be providing more capacity at every stage than will be needed and 鈥渇uture-proofing鈥� the project by incorporating surplus capacity of the parts that are hard to change, such as the fibre-optic cable and copper cables. They hope that some of the town鈥檚 residents will volunteer to be part of a 鈥渓iving laboratory鈥�, trying out new AT&T technologies in their homes.

The first wave of residents will be provided with computers if they don鈥檛 already have one. Microsoft will provide the operating system for a computer conferencing system which the town planners hope will 鈥済lue鈥� the community together rather than creating discrete, lonely electronic cubicles.

And if television has become our 鈥渆lectronic hearth鈥�, in Celebration the TV, the PC or the screenphone will become the electronic 鈥渂ack fence鈥�. Amy Westwood of the Celebration Company says that the goal will be to 鈥渞einvent the small-town porch and the general store鈥�, which were to traditional America what the caf茅 was to France and the pub to England. So the company has decided to hand over the local conferencing system to the town鈥檚 foundation, the organisation that will be in charge of fostering the town鈥檚 cultural life.

鈥淲e have to turn this over to the community,鈥� says Adams. The foundation will take the first wave of residents through the same kind of 鈥減rinciples and values鈥� exercises that they used to build the town plan in the first place, taking people back to the deep values that they hold in common. Later, the foundation will run yearly 鈥渂rainwriting鈥� sessions, intensive creative sessions designed to help the community continually and consciously reinvent itself.

Elsewhere, the futuristic tilt of Celebration is even less obvious -physically at least. On the north edge of town a large building is rising on a plot labelled 鈥淐elebration Health鈥�. Plans show a large, elegant Mediterranean-style building with palms lining the drive, nearly surrounded by small lakes.

Health landscaping

But the building, designed by Stern, is no ordinary hospital or clinic. The turbulent and expensive US healthcare system has spawned a new profession of 鈥渉ealthcare futurists鈥� who help governments and businesses understand and manage the rapidly changing healthcare landscape. Over the past few years, the Celebration Company has turned to some of the luminaries in this area, including Clem Bezold, Leland Kaiser, Kathryn Johnson, as well as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Stanford University鈥檚 Ken Pelletier.

These health futurists share a basic 鈥渉ealthy communities鈥� approach, the notion that much of health and illness arises out of behaviour, and not merely out of individual behaviour but also from the dynamics of family, work, and community.

The result will be a state-of-the-art health system, owned and operated by Orlando鈥檚 Florida Hospital (the largest not-for-profit hospital in the state), but tightly integrated with the community of Celebration. Only part of the space in the new building, scheduled to open in about a year, is dedicated to taking care of illness. Much of it is given to fostering a healthly lifestyle, to being what Kaiser calls 鈥渁 design centre for the health of the community鈥�.

There will be a health club, gym, educational areas and a bookstore, meeting rooms and counselling rooms. Children can play in the 鈥渒ids鈥� gym鈥�, a restaurant will serve good, healthy food, and adults can take classes in how to cook and eat more healthily. It will be a place to go when you are not sick.

At the same time, a Center for Health Innovations will be a proving ground and demonstration laboratory for new technology, from electronic patient records to advanced operating rooms. These state-of-the-art installations, designed by Ethicon Endosurgery and Olympus Endoscopy, will use minimally invasive surgical methods. General Electric plans to demonstrate and research advanced imaging methods, and other companies will demonstrate new medical information systems.

The clinical side of the health centre will boast an outpatient surgery centre, diagnostic imaging, rehabilitation and sports medicine, a pharmacy and a dental clinic, as well as both primary care doctors and specialists. There will be no waiting rooms, people will make their own appointments from home through the server. When they show up, they鈥檒l get a beeper so that if they have to wait at all they can stroll around the grounds or look through the bookstore.

Care continuum

There is also a big change once they see their doctor.鈥� Typically,鈥� says Pelletier, 鈥渁 physician might tell a patient to stop smoking or lose weight, but leave the patient thinking 鈥楴ow what do I do?鈥� It鈥檚 that 鈥楴ow what?鈥� part that is different here.鈥� At Celebration Health the patient could go straight from the doctor to the gym to set up an exercise programme, then to the information centre to look for videos or sign up for a cooking class, and to the bookstore to buy a guidebook about the condition. Once home, the patient can log onto the network to do continuing self-evaluation, ask the doctor a question, join a support group, or just compare notes with friends.

Across town, the school will be trying just as hard to break the mould, with such innovations as learning plans customised for each student with the parents鈥� involvement, and continuing 鈥減ortfolios鈥� of the students work as they advance. Again, values are at the core of the curriculum: ethics, diversity, cooperation, critical thinking, wellness and community service.

鈥淣eighbourhood鈥� groupings of 100 students will be taught by teams of four teachers. The buildings, which back onto a part of the dedicated wilderness area, will not be divided into standard classrooms with desks set in rows, but into 鈥渉earth鈥� areas, with big comfy reading chairs and window seats overlooking the wetlands, and 鈥渨et鈥� areas, where students will do such messy things as cook, paint and dissect frogs.

Experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, Stetson University and the US Air Force have worked on the 1400-student school鈥檚 advanced curriculum. Every student will have access to computers. Like the health centre, the school will be linked into the town鈥檚 information system, and through it to the Internet. No use a kid telling fibs about homework -they can find out what has been set by looking at the server.

The school will be connected to a teaching academy next door that will involve some of the nation鈥檚 top schools of education, including Harvard, Auburn, Johns Hopkins and the University of Minnesota. Eventually, the academy will train some 3000 educators a year in the latest techniques. It will serve not just Celebration, but the entire school district of the surrounding Osceola County. So will the school: some 220 places will be reserved annually for students who live elsewhere in the county.

The possibility of building something truly new has excited teachers from as far away as California, Canada and the UK to apply for jobs at the school.

On the surface, the town may not look much like Walt鈥檚 version of the future, but something far bigger is missing: control. Walt wanted it. He did everything inhouse and kept the details of his plans secret, convinced that his ideas were better than anyone else鈥檚. The Celebration Company, in contrast, has gone time and again to the best experts anywhere 鈥� architects, health futurists, communications experts, conservationists and education theorists 鈥� looking for ideas. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 have to invent everything new here,鈥� says Adams.

But Walt鈥檚 desire for control went even deeper. When his associate Donn Tatum commented that what Walt really wanted was 鈥渁n experimental absolute monarchy鈥�, Walt playfully asked: 鈥淐an I have one?鈥� It was a joke, but it was real all the same.

Rigid rules

He wanted to have a dress code for his community, and a behaviour code: residents could be evicted for being drunk in public or cohabiting before marriage. He would outlaw, among other things, pets, unemployment and voting. 鈥淚t will be a planned, controlled community,鈥� he said, two months before he died. 鈥淭here will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them 鈥� There will be no retirees. Everyone must be employed.鈥�

So the planners of Celebration are actually attempting something more difficult than even Walt contemplated (though they blink in surprise when this is suggested). Unlike Walt, they are willing to do their best to design the perfect town and then relinquish control, bit by bit, to its citizens, through the elected boards of their services, districts (like town councils, but with restricted powers), through their community foundation, the school district and the county authorities. 鈥淒isney can鈥檛 possibly do it all. But if we build strong links between the different parts,鈥� says Adams, 鈥渋t will work.鈥�

鈥淭he town will be what people make of it,鈥� says Corr. He and his colleagues have seen that if they want to build not just a development but a community, they must let chaotic humanity in, and they must get out of the way.