Walt & Epcot Master Plan

Walt Disney first achieved fame as an animator. He would go on to great success producing live action films, documentaries, and television programs. For urban planners, his greatest achievement would be Disneyland. Speaking before the 1963 Urban Design Conference at Harvard University, James W. Rouse summed it up best in his keynote speech when he said, “I hold a view that may be somewhat shocking to an audience as sophisticated as this: that the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland. If you think about Disneyland and think of its performance in relationship to its purpose, its meaning to people—more than that, its meaning to the process of development—you will find it the outstanding piece of urban design in the United States.”

James Rouse was no amateur observer. He had been one of the most influential and successful real estate developers of the previous fifty years. Rouse created shopping centers from industrial sites that celebrated a very strong narrative theme. Not only did he advance the concept of the “festival marketplace” such as Faneuil Hall in Boston, Harborplace in Baltimore, and the South Street Seaport in New York City; but he also had built the model communities of Columbia, Maryland, and Reston, Virginia. Rouse went on to describe why he could make such a bold statement. He said, “[Walt] took an area of activity—the amusement park—and lifted it to a standard so high in its performance, in its respect for people, in its functioning for people, that it really does become a brand new thing. It fulfills all its functions it set out to accomplish, un-self-consciously, usefully, and profitably to its owners and developers.” He told the audience that “I find more to learn in the standards that have been set and in the goals that have been achieved in the development of Disneyland than in any other piece of physical development in the country.”

So what would have happened if Walt Disney could have built a city of his own? He tried. He first seriously considered the idea in 1959. Disney was frustrated with the random strip development around his park in Anaheim. He called it a “second-rate Las Vegas.” The eccentric billionaire John D. MacArthur offered him 12,000-acres in Palm Beach, Florida, to build a 400-acre East Coast Disneyland and the city that would surround it.

Once Disney got the offer, he began to study everything he could about urban planning. His insatiable curiosity lead him to Ebenezer Howard’s writings and Stockholm, Sweden with its satellite towns. What he came up with was something that was heavily influenced by the work done by Victor Gruen for the proposed 1964 World’s Fair in Washington, D.C. The fair may have gone to New York and Disney played an important part in the success of that exhibition. But it was the post-fair plans for a radial city for 100,000 using the existing infrastructure that stuck with Disney.

Disney’s brother Roy went to Florida to close the deal with MacArthur but the negotiations broke down and MacArthur walked away. However, Disney was now hooked on the potential of Florida and started to look elsewhere within the state. He hired Harrison “Buzz” Price to find the perfect property. Price was a numbers guy who founded Economic Research Associates (ERA). He was responsible for finding the location for Disneyland and would go on to work with Disney on more than 150 projects as a consultant. After a great deal of research, Disney would plant his flag in central Florida after secretly purchasing 27,433-acres near the small town of Orlando.

Walt Disney called the project E.P.C.O.T, the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. He believed technology, respectful urban design based on timeless principles, and innovation could solve the problems of our cities.

E.P.C.O.T would provide corporations an opportunity to test their products in real-world conditions and to display the benefits to the public in a setting blessed with the Walt Disney halo. In an internal report, “American industry will make it come to life. It will be a ‘think project,’ not a think factory. Not only think – here these things will actually work.”

Why? After all, his entire career was based on exploiting technologies before his peers could see their promises. His success as an early adopter of synchronized sound; color, the multi-plane camera (adding depth to animated films), and other technologies put him years ahead of his competitors. It‘s no wonder building a city that would become as Walt Disney said himself “a showcase to the world of American free enterprises” sounded so appealing to him.

Once on property, guests would leave behind the messy vitality of the everyday world and enter a world where the visual contradictions have been eliminated. This architecture of reassurance was the hallmark of Disney design developed at Disneyland. As a result, people could relax and be open to whatever is before them. In a 1958 article in The New York Times, they said that Disney created, “The same suspension of disbelief which has been the secret of theatrical success down the corridors of time.” They added, “In the theatre the vital ingredient is not realism, but a blending of the real with the imaginary. The entertainer invites the audience to meet him half way. This is what has been successfully achieved at Disneyland.”

At a press conference on Nov. 15, 1965, Walt Disney said, “I would like to be a part of building a model community, a city of tomorrow as you might say, because I don’t believe in going out to this extreme blue sky stuff that some of the architects do. I believe people still … want to live like human beings.” A community that is designed “so that the automobile is there but still put people back as pedestrians again.”

E.P.C.O.T would have been at the center of Disney World. The overall site plan for Disney World was basically a string of activity nodes placed along a south-to-north multi-modal transit corridor. The corridor was constrained on three sides — north, east, and west — by wilderness areas. Walt Disney personally drew up the first master plan; and as the planning process evolved, it did not stray very far from his initial concept. From his very first schematic drawing to the final plan prepared just prior to his death, the basic alignment of land uses remained relatively the same. As Walt had said, “There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we could possibly imagine.”

At the southern end at the intersection of Interstate 4 and Florida’s Turnpike (which was called the Sunshine State Parkway when Disney designed Disney World) would be the Entrance Complex. At the northern end, drawing in visitors like a light bulb attracts moths — the Magic Kingdom theme park. In between sat an industrial park and the city of E.P.C.O.T.

Visitors flying into Orlando could land at the jetport, Disney World’s own “airport of the future” in Osceola County. Guests driving to Disney World would most likely park at the Entrance Complex. Some would drive directly to their destination via a roadway system under the monorail beam. Connecting all of these destinations together would be the monorail, a high-speed rapid transit system running almost the full length of the property.

The monorail provided other benefits beyond transportation. Walt felt it was important to give people a preview of upcoming attractions — be it his movies, television show, or theme park. At Disney World, he aligned the roadways and the monorail to pass through all of the activity nodes on the way to the theme park. As guests arrive at Disney World, this alignment would allow visibility into the Industrial Park, E.P.C.O.T, the Magic Kingdom, and other destinations.

The process of design predated Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature (1995) but followed similar principles. Disney planner Marvin Davis first identified sensitive areas that they absolutely wanted to preserve. To define the development corridor, they used the natural wetlands (Reedy Creek and Bonnet Creek) and used them as landscaped buffers. Those areas were set aside from development in perpetuity. Next, they selected additional open space areas that may be a bit more subjective; they are not sensitive and could be developed but are not because they provide other benefits to the project, including aesthetic value. This was Disney taking the long view.

Within the open space areas would be pockets of land intended for controlled growth. Development areas were secondary to the areas worthy of preservation. In that first sketch made by Disney, he marked the development areas and specified where he wanted to place the major activity nodes such as the theme park, the resorts, his city, industrial park, and other amenities like a golf course and a swamp ride.

Sometimes the function for a particular facility dictated its location. These structures could not be located just anywhere. For example, Disney declared that the theme park would be at the north end of the property so that guests would be required to pass the other land uses to get to it. This meant building up one of the areas most prone to flooding. He knew that the Entrance Complex had to be near the main highways and the Jetport would work best if it were located at the southern edge of the property, away from where most of the people would be.

For most guests, the Entrance Complex and Registration Center would be their first destination. From there, they would rely on Disney transportation, just as Disney intended. He knew that Disney World and E.P.C.O.T would have to be designed to accommodate the realities of the automobile but his hope was that residents and visitors who arrived by car would be willing to park once if they were offered a superior, attractive, efficient form of mass transit as an option. Counting on human nature, Disney knew that guests were like water; they will always search for the easiest path to get where they are going. The Entrance Complex would be inviting, allow guests to immediately decompress, and orient them so that they could be on their way toward their vacation destination.

All roads and modes would lead to the multistory Transportation Lobby, the heart of E.P.C.O.T. Disney wanted to build the ultimate Transit Oriented Development with density, design, and diversity. The Transportation Lobby would be the one spot where every pathway came together; people could easily orient themselves, and then head toward a new destination. The lowest level was reserved for supply vehicles. The middle level would be reserved for automobiles.  The top level of the Transportation Lobby would be the home base for the monorail and the WEDway PeopleMover network — both of which would be elevated above the walkways.

Designed for the benefit of pedestrians and those using public transit, the E.P.C.O.T design intentionally discouraged the use of automobiles. The monorail was for rapid transit over longer distances and the WEDway PeopleMover was for shorter travel distances. Each transit system was the right scale and the right technology for the job. In 1966, New York City planning powerhouse Robert Moses was so impressed with Disney’s plans he claimed that E.P.C.O.T would be the “first accident-free, noise-free, pollution-free city center in America.”

The Alweg Monorail had proven it could function reliably and provided a high level of service when it opened in 1959 at Disneyland. Walt Disney was confident that he found the transportation backbone for the entire project and he wanted to integrate the technology into his city.

The monorail would connect all of the major destinations starting with the airport in the south, then heading north toward the Entrance Complex. The trains would pass through the Industrial Parks and enter the Transportation Lobby below the mixed-use Cosmopolitan Hotel.  From there they would continue north and drop guests off at the Magic Kingdom. Additional spur lines were planned to lead to motel clusters and a low-density village projected for a later phase.

The WEDway PeopleMover system was the answer to another critical piece of the transportation puzzle. Disney needed a reliable intermediate transportation system that would radiate to and from the Transportation Lobby and ferry guests to the retail districts, the high-density apartments, the greenbelt with its recreational facilities, and the ring of low-density single-family homes. Based on a ride system developed for the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, the PeopleMover had minimal “headway time,” the waiting time until the next vehicle arrives. Riders would never wait more then three minutes to board and if a train was not already at the station, a rider could press a button to signal for one. As the demand decreased, surplus trains would move back into the roundhouse.

The PeopleMover would leave the Transportation Lobby and pass through the center city with the resort hotel, the retail, dining, and office centers, and a high-density residential urban zone that surrounded the core center city. They would then exit the weather-protected enclosure and pass through the greenbelt with final stops in the low-density residential zone. A permanent environmental preserve would surround all of this.

From a distance, the most notable physical structure would be the 50-acre elliptical Center City with a 30-story gleaming modern hotel tower sticking out of its midpoint. An aerial view of this structure has been described as an eyeball drawn by [Swiss Surrealist] H.R. Giger. Building on the success of architect Victor Gruen’s indoor shopping centers and the Astrodome in Houston, Disney wanted to enclose the city streets and buildings in the Center City so that he could protect his guests from the brutal Florida summers and give him complete control of the space. This also meant that E.P.C.O.T would truly be a prototype that could be reproduced anywhere. Outside of the enclosed Center City complex would be a greenbelt and a low-density residential area. The entire E.P.C.O.T project would cover some 1,100-acres.

The visual center of E.P.C.O.T and “a shining jewel at the center of the city” would be the futuristic 30-story, 600-room Cosmopolitan Resort Hotel. It was the signature piece of architecture and the “beckoning hand” for the whole project. Clearly the tallest structure at Disney World, the hotel (designed by architect George Rester) was meant to be E.P.C.O.T’s icon, just as Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella Castle is for the theme parks.

Located directly above the Transportation Lobby, the hotel would feature other amenities including spa facilities and a seven-acre recreation deck with swimming pools, trees, and waterfalls, located high above the pedestrian and shopping areas. The facility would be everything one would expect from a first-class luxury hotel.

Surrounding the Cosmopolitan Resort Hotel at its base would be the Town Center Entertainment District. This District was organized like a daisy. At the center was the hotel. Radiating out like petals were sections to represent different parts of the world. Separating these petals, the elevated WEDway PeopleMover tracks. Guests could preview the various districts by train and then decide which one to explore.

The Town Center would become E.P.C.O.T’s dynamic urban destination and offer the excitement and variety of activities found only in the metropolitan cities: cultural, social, business, and entertainment. As a destination, the District would be an unprecedented mix of carefully orchestrated signature retail, dining, and outstanding entertainment. It would have an ample supply of quality attractions, a variety of uses, and a few little surprises that would make guests want to come back. According to master planner Marvin Davis, each “country” street would occupy a long city block inside of the iconic “dome,” which would be approximately 1,500 feet long. At the edge of the shopping district would be corporate offices for many of the companies participating in the project.

Inside the Town Center, 21.5 acres (43 percent) of the space would be dedicated to retail and hospitality areas. The E.P.C.O.T transportation network and other public realm amenities would account for 16 acres (32 percent); the remaining 12.5 acres (25 percent) would contain non-retail uses such as office space, a television studio, banks, service shops, and warehouse space. Other non-retail uses included civic functions such as community administration, a fire station, post office, library, and a hospital.

In a film produced shortly before Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the announcer proclaimed, “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 E.P.C.O.Ts central city.”

Along the outer rim of the enclosed structure would be a ring of high-density offices and another ring of residential apartments. Along with millions of visitors, E.P.C.O.T would be home to 20,000 residents. Most would live in four- to six-story high-density apartment blocks surrounding the Town Center. This combination created a shopping center that automatically came with a critical mass of visitors throughout the year.  In real estate, it is all about the numbers. E.P.C.O.T was not just a fantasy city. The project was rooted in the reality of the marketplace. Walt Disney may have been a visionary but he was also a businessman and he intended to make money.

Living in one of the E.P.C.O.T Town Center apartments or the outlying single-family homes could be very exciting. Living quarters in this demonstration city would be well appointed with the latest gadgets. E.P.C.O.T residents would participate in focus groups to evaluate the viability of the new technologies.

Just beyond the ring of high-density apartments would be the Greenbelt with indoor and outdoor recreation facilities for all age groups, churches, and a generous allotment of park space, accessible to as many people as possible.

Disney knew that some people would prefer to live in single-family homes and have access to their automobiles. After all, this project was conceived when the suburban lifestyle was booming. Consistent with the Garden City concept and towns like Radburn, New Jersey the streets run behind the homes, and they are organized around cul de-sacs. Each home’s front door would be oriented toward the open space corridor, away from the area where the automobile is parked.

However, unlike other mid-century suburbs, E.P.C.O.T would provide multiple transit options to lure residents out of those automobiles. For most residents, riding bicycles, using small electronic scooters or the PeopleMover would be the primary way of getting around. Asked why there was a low-density housing component, Buzz Price confided to the author in an interview, “Walt wanted a place for his friends to live.

Just beyond E.P.C.O.T’s low-density residential subdivision would be a rural zone. After Disney’s experience in Anaheim, he knew that he wanted to protect Disney World from adjacent development. At Disneyland, he hid the park behind an earthen berm. At Disney World, he would shield his city from the outside world by placing all of the development between two very large swamps.

Much of the rural land was dedicated to the complex drainage system that allowed for the level of development Disney desired. That system consists of 44 miles of canals, 18 miles of levees, 13 water-control structures, and more than 10,000-acres used for runoff in lakes, waterways, and wetlands. The system was engineered so well that there has never been flooding in the adjacent properties.

Along with the city center, the theme park, and resort hotels were other innovative land uses. The 1,000-acre Industrial Park would have been connected to E.P.C.O.T by the monorail. Meant to be a showcase for American industry and ingenuity, the Industrial Park added another dimension to the Disney World project. Disney wanted to work with individual companies to create a showcase of industry at work.

What would those companies get in return? The millions of people who visit Disney World each year to look behind the scenes at experimental prototype plants, research and development laboratories, and computer centers for major corporations. Imagine the good will and the ability to test-market products.

As shown in the original Disney World plans, the Industrial Park would be strategically placed between the Entrance Complex and the E.P.C.O.T Transportation Lobby.

Disney was impressed by the Stanford Industrial Park (1951) located in Palo Alto, California. Stanford University had developed the property to exploit its intellectual activities in science and technology and enhance its reputation as a major research institution. The school combined two things that were antithetical: industry and a park, thereby inventing a new category of land use that would become known as an “industrial park.” Said Disney historian Paul Anderson, “Walt knew that the only way to pull off his dream of [E.P.C.O.T] was to involve American industry, and this complex was just one of many strategies to help entice this kind of involvement.”

Each Industrial Park cluster would be made up of five or six large two-story buildings facing an elevated PeopleMover station. Each building was shaped like a piece of a pie, with the narrow end facing the station. The front entrance of each office building would face a well-designed public plaza surrounding the base of the transit station. As the morning unfolded, the plaza would come alive with a blend of workers and visitors using the services and amenities, such as dining and shopping, conveniently located underneath the station. All of this was connected to the other destinations by monorail.

Governance was also a concern. The solution was to convince the Florida Legislature to give Walt Disney Productions unprecedented land use development rights under the jurisdiction of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Housing would not be permanent. Like a cruise ship, employees from Disney and their corporate partners lived on the property for a short duration and then would be forced to leave. “There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control,” Disney said. “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 E.P.C.O.T must help keep it alive.”

Would it have worked? We will never know. Instead of a city, Walt Disney Productions built a theme park, resort hotels, and a permanent World’s Fair. Later on they developed a large chunk of land on their southern border to build the town of Celebration. With little relationship to Walt Disney ‘s progressive vision, the project was meant to evoke small town America and sell homes at a premium rate. The land was deannexed by the Reedy Creek Improvement District so as to not dilute Disney’s voting power.

There was a lot of risk and a lot of unanswered questions. Would people agree to live in a demonstration city? How would Disney deal with education issues? Would there be schools? Would the project turn into a dark vision of a company town such as Pullman, Illinois or Fordlândia in Brazil?

The group who worked on the E.P.C.O.T project was very small. One of those men was Buzz Price. “Walt would obsess over a problem,” Price said. He noted that the concept and design for E.P.C.O.T was not revolutionary but evolutionary, based on tried-and-true architectural technologies and a creative and thoughtful blend of the land uses. E.P.C.O.T was arranged in a way where the hotel and day guests coming from one direction would meet the residents coming from another direction in the middle. This would create a community with the built-in critical mass for sustainable economic success. In Walt Disney’s E.P.C.O.T, everyone could interact in a beautiful, comfortable, safe, and inspiring public setting.

When asked by the author if E.P.C.O.T would have worked, Price said without hesitation, “Absolutely yes. E.P.C.O.T would have been more famous than Walt Disney World.”