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• Author:: [[Sam Gennawey]]
• Reading Status:: [[Books Read]]
• Recommended By:: [[Amazon]]
• Tags:: #Books #[[City Building]] #[[Walt Disney]] #[[Small Towns]] #downtown
• Key Takeaways::
  • How to Build a City
    • [[Be Observant]]
      • My obsession with these questions started long ago — but it was not until I was reading [[In Service to the Mouse]] that I fully understood why. The book is the autobiography of [[Jack Lindquist]], Disneyland’s first president. He was fortunate to learn his craft directly from Walt Disney. One of those lessons was that the best solutions usually came after a great deal of observation. #[[Be Observant]]
      • As with every opportunity that faced Walt, he was not satisfied with the status quo and knew he could do it better if given the chance. In the world of animation, the typical way to start is to pull out a blank sheet of paper. Walt knew the next time he decided to build a theme park that he would reach for the largest canvas he could find and buy enough land so that he could control what was in the frame. Just like the movies. In 1959, Walt was given a chance to do it the right way. A billionaire offered him a chance to build another Disneyland in Palm Beach, Florida — only this time, Walt would get to design the city that surrounded the park. Walt knew that there was a huge untapped market for another theme park on the East Coast. According to Harrison “Buzz” Price, a land use economist who advised Walt, although the Palm Beach project ultimately did not move forward, it became a defining moment for Walt: this is when he became obsessed with building a city.
    • Build the things people want in a way that is revolutionary; don't shove things down their throats just because you think it's "progress"
      • Walt said, “I would like to be part of building a model community, a City of Tomorrow, you might say, because I don’t believe in going out to the extreme blue-sky stuff that some architects do. I believe that people still want to live like human beings. There’s a lot of things that could be done.” He added, “I’m not against the automobile, but I just feel that the automobile has moved into communities too much. I feel that you can design so that the automobile is there, but still put people back as pedestrians, you see. I’d love to work on a project like that.” Walt was also excited about building the school of tomorrow. Walt wanted the school to be a pilot operation for teaching aids.
    • [[Experimentation]]
      • What was not known to the general public was that the attraction was specifically designed as a prototype for the system that Walt wanted to install in his futuristic city of EPCOT. Just as he did with the monorail, Walt was using Disneyland as a way of testing the durability of the technology. It was one of the breakthrough technologies that helped spatially define Tomorrowland.
      • In the film, Walt tells us, “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.” In order to implement this vision, he proclaims that “[we] start with the public need. And the need is not just 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.” He cautions us that “the sketches and plans you will see today are simply a starting point”. We are warned that “everything in this room may change time and time again as we move ahead”. But he promises, “The basic philosophy of what we’re planning for Disney World is going to remain very much as it is right now.”
      • Would people have enjoyed living in EPCOT? Ward Kimball did not believe that EPCOT could have worked. He suggested that “you can’t experiment with people’s lives”.
    • [[Transportation]]
      • Gruen also expresses frustration with the lack of progress in the development of new public transportation technologies. He comments that millions of people go to Disneyland to ride a monorail that is being promoted as the transportation system of the future, but he is disappointed that the technology had been around since the 1890s.
      • When Walt decided to build a city, he figured a monorail system would become the transportation backbone for the entire project. At Disneyland, Walt had proven it could function reliably and provide a high level of service, and he wanted to integrate the technology into his city. The success of this transportation system is a principal reason why Walt thought that EPCOT could work as a city.
      • If we lived in one of the apartment buildings, we most likely would not own an automobile — most of the time we would have no need for one. Because of the cost of parking spaces and the experimental nature of EPCOT, most apartment dwellers are not even allotted a space to park a vehicle in the large underground parking structure near the Transportation Lobby. Those living in apartments are for the most part required to rely solely on public transportation, short-range electric vehicles for on-property trips, or rental cars for longer journeys.
      • A typical pedestrian shed is only one-quarter mile. Within a pedestrian shed, you should find a range of services that meet ordinary human needs. There should be a balance of living, working, shopping, and recreational opportunities. Access to a convenient transit stop can extend the range of the pedestrian shed, and that is the secret to EPCOT’s success. “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,” according to the film.
    • How does your city tap into "universal feelings?"
      • One of the most fundamental and relevant discoveries from Alexander’s research has been the realization that “human feeling is mostly the same, mostly the same from person to person, mostly the same in every person”. Some would argue that this could not be true as we are all individuals and we have different experiences, backgrounds, cultures, and education. Alexander acknowledged that “there is a part of human feeling where we are all different” and “each of us has our idiosyncrasies, our unique individual human character” and “we often concentrate on… talking about feelings, and comparing feelings”. Nonetheless, Alexander’s forty-year research has shown that those individual qualities account for only 10 percent of human feelings. The other 90 percent are the “stuff in which we are all the same and we feel the same things”. One of Walt Disney’s greatest gifts was his ability to understand and tap into those universal feelings.
      • Those universal feelings should extend to the space and flows of everything and its universal not only in emotion but in culture
        • The Plaza Hub orients and reassures the guests with minimal signage and direction. This space bridges every culture and speaks a universal language.
    • Understand that "quality without a name"
      • In DisneyWar, James B. Stewart defined the Disney magic as that moment when “people’s apprehension turns into awe and delight”. When Disney guests step into the environment based on a timeless way of building — an environment that has the quality without a name — they realize that they are in a place where their dreams can come true.
      • When you enter a space that feels right, you know it possesses that “quality without a name” immediately, even if you are not able to articulate why you have these feelings. If you are asked to list why you have such positive feelings, you soon discover that your words are inadequate. It is almost impossible to truly capture the experience in such a way that it can be shared; however, you know the quality does exist, because you have just experienced it.
      • John Hench said the architecture, colors, background sounds, music, and smells create an environment where “the order here at Disneyland works on people, the sense of harmony. They feel more content here, in a way that they can’t explain. You find strangers talking to each other without fear.”
    • Understand [[space making]]
      • Functionally, the Main Street corridor is between two “Activity Nodes” and becomes a “Promenade”. The corridor is designed to be a “Shopping Street” with a “Market of Many Shops”. The atmosphere is almost a “Carnival” and it is not uncommon to see “Dancing in the Street”. Main Street becomes “Common Land” and a “Public Outdoor Room”. The façades were designed in a way that creates the appearance of “Individually Owned Shops”, even though we know that is not a reflection of the reality inside. There are “Street Cafés”, “Food Stands”, and occasionally people “Sleeping in Public” in Town Square and in the Plaza Hub.
      • What may matter most is that the Imagineers were thoughtful enough to include a place to pause and reflect, relax and unwind, yet still be a part of the action. As the other Disneyland-type parks have grown much larger and grander, they have eliminated this type of space. That is one reason why the park in Anaheim feels more intimate than the others. This is a perfect example of a space that has that quality without a name and achieves a higher degree of life. The Wizard of Bras porch example only scratches at the surface of how to use A Pattern Language to describe the experience of a space so that it can be shared and possibly duplicated elsewhere. #[[Sometimes doing nothing is the most important something]]
        • How do you maintain a sense of closeness in a city as it scales? How do you create neighborhood familiarity in the largest cities in the world? #Community
      • “Architecture is the thoughtful making of space,” according to the great architect [[Louis Kahn]]. Many architects are focused on the object and how that object interacts within the context of the surrounding space. City planners, however, deal with the process. They provide direction for the application of the patterns that lead to good design, and they draft the policies that allow for creation of thoughtful spaces.
      • What Walt wanted to get back to was the human-scale community. He wanted to return the public realm back to people. He knew that, for too long, we had been designing our public and private spaces for the convenience of the automobile. There had to be a better way.
      • We enjoy spaces best when they appeal to all of our senses. If we can look, listen, smell, taste, and touch the good things, we are more comfortable. Walt’s solution throughout Disneyland was to pick the right surface materials and appropriate music, and to install Smellitzers, a special machine that pumps out the scent of cookies and candy. He applied the same solution for the themed areas inside of EPCOT.
      • Understanding the human connection to nature
        • Just beyond the ring of high-density apartments we can see the community’s most significant shared asset, the “sheltering” greenbelt. As described in the EPCOT film, the “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.”
        • Find the city designs in [[Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling]] where they talk about big shared backyards #[[Find the Quote]]
      • Even though EPCOT was never built as Walt imagined it, the Walt Disney World project has been influential in the way we design public spaces. Just like Disneyland, it has raised our expectations on how the built environment can meet the public need.
    • Are you creating a place to reside or a place to truly live?
      • Walt himself said, “Physically, Disneyland would be a small world in itself — it would encompass the essence of the things that were good and true in American life. It would reflect the faith and challenge of the future, the entertainment, the interest in intelligently presented facts, the stimulation of the imagination, the standards of health and achievement, and above all, a sense of strength, contentment, and well-being.”
      • Evangelist Billy Graham once told Walt that Disneyland was “a nice fantasy”. This did not sit well with Walt. He replied, “You know the fantasy isn’t here. This is very real… The Park is reality. The people are natural here; they’re having a good time; they’re communicating. This is what people really are. The fantasy is — out there, outside the gates of Disneyland, where people have hatreds and people have prejudices. It’s not really real!”
    • Expose yourself to the very best ideas available
      • A century before there was Disneyland, there were World’s Fairs. Walt was influenced by World’s Fairs, and he in turn influenced a number of these major global events. His experience with World’s Fairs helped feed his interest and understanding of city planning; many elements of the Disney theme park experience are rooted in these spectacular temporary international events.
      • Any World’s Fair represents the ultimate “invented place”. The best of the fairs captured the public’s imagination like no other event. Many times the ideas on display were so powerful that community leaders would return home and commit vast sums of money, political capital, and land to transform their cities to reflect the latest trends.
      • According to Disney Legend Ray Watson, Walt was also a big fan of [[Stockholm]], Sweden. He kept a booklet about the city in his office. From 1950 to 1970, city planners had modernized Stockholm by building four new satellite towns. Each satellite town featured its own high-density center around the transit node and had a mix of uses including shopping, commercial, and residential. The satellite towns consisted of functional pods; each pod connected to the town center by a radial subway system and highways. Walt’s EPCOT plans were clearly influenced by the Stockholm satellite design.
    • What is the over-arching model for your city?
      • Alexander’s first assertion is that “centers arise in space”. Centers have to start in a specific place. Walt wanted a specific, identifiable space at the center of his park that would clearly orientate guests to the various “lands”, or what planners would call “adjacent activity nodes”. The Partners statue is at the center of such a place, and it is called the Plaza Hub. This hub serves as a distribution point. Its function is at the heart of its design. This circulation pattern is known as the radial plan or — in “Disneyspeak” — the hub-and-spoke.
      • Gruen believed that there was an underlying cellular nature to a properly built community. If the basic unit of life is a cell, and millions of cells can come together to create an organism, he reasoned that an urban structure based on cells (clusters of mixed-use development) would be the healthiest system. Mixed use refers to a building or a cluster of buildings in the same general area through adjacency with multiple functions that coexist and can include residential, commercial, office, or live/ work space. This blending of functions enhances pedestrian activity and safety, and it reduces the need for parking space. Think of the image of Main Street, U.S.A. Downstairs are the shops, and upstairs are the imaginary offices of important people. A crucial benefit of a cellular urban organization is that it can be scaled as small as a home or as large as a metropolis.
      • To illustrate the cellular concept, Gruen compared a city to the human body. In a person, a healthy heart is one that shows high cardiac output. For a city, the central business district is the heart, which must demonstrate “high vitality”. Vitality is measured by the ability of primary functions to perform successfully and without strain. A healthy city is one with an “infinite variety whose buildings and structures form, between them, spaces of differing size and character, narrow or broad, serene or dynamic, modest or monumental, contrasting with each other by virtue of varied treatment of pavement, landscaping, and lighting”. The only way to achieve “high vitality” is to ensure that the secondary or “utilitarian” functions are also working well. These utilitarian functions include sewer systems, the telecommunications networks, power supply, and transportation systems.
    • Give people a mission statement to live and build towards
      • Walt had said, “[EPCOT] will be a planned, controlled community; a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural, and educational opportunities. There will be no slums because we won’t let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals.” He added, “There will be no retirees, because everyone must be employed according to their ability. ^^One of our requirements is that the people who live in EPCOT must help keep it alive.^^ Everyone who lives here will have a responsibility to help keep this community an exciting living blueprint of the future.” Just like the animation studio, everything would be a team effort working toward one man’s dream.
  • What do cities get built around? #[[City Building]]
    • Cities can pop up around natural resources, universities, large employers, or opportunities for technological display
      • For Walt, EPCOT would be a way for American corporations to show how technology, creative thinking, and hard work could change the world. He saw this project as a way to influence the public’s expectations about city life, in the same way his earlier work had redefined what it meant to watch an animated film or visit an amusement park.
      • Walt’s intention was to use the experimental new town as a way to demonstrate the latest thinking in technology, service delivery, and governance. He wanted to build his city from scratch on virgin land, heeding [[Henry Ford]]’s advice: “We shall solve the City Problem by leaving the City.” Walt wanted to move away from the dominant model of suburban sprawl that was rapidly taking root throughout the United States. He wanted to demonstrate a different model that relied upon a mixed-use, transit-oriented development. [[John Hench]] said that EPCOT would “show how many of today’s city problems can be solved through proper master planning”.
      • The project “will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are emerging from the forefront of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed. It will always be showcasing and testing and demonstrating new materials and new systems.” Most importantly, Walt reminded us, “There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.”
    • No matter the driver of WHY people are there the thing that keeps them there is centrality
      • Although I could find no record of Walt and Gruen ever meeting, in separate interviews they each shared the same belief that television and the suburbs were sapping the vitality out of our city centers. They both figured that if you lose the center, the community is soon to be lost as well.
    • Never lose sight of the "why" of a city
      • The promise of Progress City was that EPCOT would become a laboratory to test new technologies, processes, and policies to create more livable urban environments. Walt said the purpose for EPCOT was to “build a living showcase that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other place in the world”. EPCOT would have better access and less traffic than the traditional city. There would be a proper balance between public and private space. The community would enjoy many shared benefits and a logical relationship between the land uses and the connections that bind them together. The entire development would be very compact and would efficiently use the land, resources, and infrastructure in a thoughtful way. Walt wanted to build a city that was planned for people — not for the architecture magazines and the critics.
  • What is a [[Utopia]]?
    • It's problematic
      • Historian Joseph Corn said of projects like EPCOT, “Technological utopianism, a creed once widely held by historians and the general public alike, has been dealt a number of serious blows. It has become at once compelling as a topic of historical inquiry and problematic as a guide to public policy.” Walt’s EPCOT dream had become a historic case study. What lessons could we learn?
    • It's hierarchical
      • Marvin Davis said, “Walt’s thought was that in order to maintain the original philosophy of keeping this an experimental prototype, it would have to be something that was pretty much controlled by the company… This is something that we never really discuss very much publicly… In order to have the control that is necessary there, you would just about eliminate the possibility of having a voting community. Because the minute they start voting, then you lose control, and that’s the end of the possibility of experimental development.” #Democracy
    • It's collaborative
      • This would be a city “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”. Welcome to Walt’s technological utopia! And he is not going to do this alone. He is “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”.
    • It's invented
      • In 1985, Howard P. Segal released [[Technological Utopianism in American Culture]], which focused on futurist fiction between 1883 and 1933 and identified the major themes shared by the authors. In Vinyl Leaves, Stephen Fjellman benchmarked Epcot Center against these themes and noted that many of these ideas were expressed in the theme park. Walt’s vision for EPCOT also shared many of these same themes. #[[Historical Futurist]]
    • It's conventional
      • As you recall, at the Florida press conference Walt said, “I don’t believe in going out to the extreme blue-sky stuff that some architects do. I believe that people still want to live like human beings.” When you peel back the layers, we find that Walt’s utopia was rather conventional with regard to existing construction technology; as an urban transect, virtually everything about it was tied one way or another to already existing communities.
  • [[Open Source Knowledge]]
    • Architect Matthew Frederick provided one definition for ^^sharable knowledge^^. He suggested, “If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough.”
      • “Now you as teachers are not being sent out to teach new doctrine. You’re to teach the old [doctrine], ^^not so plain that they can just understand, but you must teach the [doctrine] of the Church so plainly that no one can misunderstand”^^ [[Harold B. Lee]] (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 458).
    • The purpose of a city is to create shared ideas and sociality
      • As Gruen suggests, “One of the primary purposes for a city is to bring together many people so that, through direct communication with each other, they may exchange goods and ideas without undue loss of energy and time.” Gruen says a city that is functioning properly gives one “free choice” to be “sociable” or to be private — to express your “human gregariousness” while meeting others or “the chance to disappear”.
    • Idea synthesis
      • It is revealing that the only urban planning book in Walt’s collection was Heart of Our Cities; certainly he must have resonated with its message, especially with regard to solving the mobility issues. Technologies for transportation systems were among Walt’s passions and specialties, and he made major improvements upon Gruen’s designs. For EPCOT, Walt proposed to use monorails, PeopleMovers, and electric vehicles to move people around. Once again, Walt would synthesize the best of other people’s ideas and create something not only better, but wholly unique.
  • Visionary's Mind
    • Quality
      • This would be no ordinary tunnel. Walt wanted to create a bit of drama. He proposed that the 90-foot tunnel be designed with a slight S-curve in the middle, such that a rider would not be able to see the exit when the train first enters the tunnel. For a brief moment, passengers were completely in the dark. In Inside the Dream, artist Herb Ryman recalls the foreman on the job suggested it was cheaper to build it straight. Walt’s angry retort was, “It’s cheaper not to do it at all.” As you would expect, Walt got his tunnel the way that he wanted it.
        • "If something is worth doing it's worth doing right."
    • Obsession & [[Focus]]
    • Voracious Learning #[[Spirit of Humility]]
    • [[Long Term Thinking]]
    • [[Vision]]
• Notes::