The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) was a grand vision of Walt Disney’s to create what he hoped would be a utopian city with the most cutting-edge technology. He passed away before he could come anywhere close to realizing that dream, and the company named after him quickly scuttled away from his master plan after his death. EPCOT would eventually see new life as a theme park that in many ways kept with the spirit of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, but it was and is certainly a far cry from the original intentions for the area. That’s a shame, because a lot of the ideas that fueled it still hold up today.
That being said, there are some plans that would probably have needed to be changed if Walt had envisioned EPCOT in the present day. Here are four things that may be different if that were the case.
1. Employment probably wouldn’t be mandatory for every citizen
In Walt Disney’s original plans for the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, every person who lived there would have had to hold down a job. While this might seem fairly reasonable at first, it might not work today. There’s a better understanding and more acceptance of disabilities that prohibit people from working regularly, and Walt would have faced some serious heat if he didn’t allow the individuals who have those kinds of disabilities to stay in his city (of course, that may have been the case anyway even back in the late 1960s).
Also, even though the retirement age is sure to rise as the years go by, I think most Americans today want to believe that at SOME point in their lives they will be able to stop working, and would largely reject Walt’s idea of being employed until their dying days (or facing the prospect of moving out of the city into satellite communities for retirees). The idea of everyone having a job was conceived so that every resident would have a stake in its future, which is a noble endeavor, but unemployment is an extremely hard facet of life to avoid completely in any type of government or society.
2. The government would have to be more involved than originally planned
Walt had grand ambitions for EPCOT, and the only way he though he could achieve all of his dreams was if he had pretty much absolute control over the area. He actually essentially got it; the State of Florida Legislature signed over the municipal rights to the land he had acquired. With municipal rights to his Florida land, Walt could do things land owners in the 1960s and especially land owners now could only dream of. A nuclear power plant was actually considered for EPCOT at one point, because Walt could have added one to his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow without all that much difficulty if he so wished it.
If EPCOT were being made today, it’s very likely that there would be more protests about the level of power Walt was asking for. The U.S. government is in many ways more involved today than it was back in the 1960s, and may not have allowed the Florida Legislature to make that kind of deal, no matter how many dollars EPCOT and the promised theme park to go along with it would bring in for the state.
The Walt Disney World area actually still has these municipal rights, but that hasn’t been much of an issue because the Walt Disney Company has been fairly conservative with the power it wields. Were they to actually go through with a whole futuristic, supposedly utopian city like EPCOT instead of just run theme parks, however, Disney would need to push that power much further to achieve anything resembling Walt’s vision.
3. Walt would have had to give the citizens more rights
In the plans Walt Disney outlined, citizens of the city would have ZERO rights to either vote or own land. The idea that people in the city wouldn’t own any land isn’t terribly hard to imagine today, as renting is becoming more and more common in a lot of different areas of life, but the inability to vote for laws and their representation definitely wouldn’t fly.
With the municipal rights to EPCOT mentioned above, everyone living in the Community of Tomorrow would have essentially been an employee of Disney or another EPCOT participant. As such, they wouldn’t necessarily be involved in many of the decisions being made from the top. Walt’s reason for this was so that he’d be able to quickly make decisions that would revolutionize EPCOT, especially in regards to advancing the technology to keep the city ahead of the curve. Possibly back in the 60s but especially now, that kind of justification wouldn’t hold enough water to allow a city to be run like something more akin to a dictatorship than a democracy.
4. Walt would have probably had to be more open to automobiles
As brilliant as the monorail and WEDWay PeopleMover forms of transportation were when Walt envisioned EPCOT and still are now, it would be even harder to get people to rely solely on them to get around today. Automobiles are now owned by most adult Americans, and many would be hesitant to give them up, even if that meant sacrificing the opportunity to live in the futuristic new city. Walt intended for cars and trucks and vans to mostly operate underneath the city in 1966, like the underground areas at some Disney parks, mainly to deliver supplies. Residents’ cars were to be used “only for weekend pleasure trips.” Now that private transportation is extremely common in the United States, Walt probably may have had to make some major compromises and allow citizens of EPCOT to drive around independently if it were being made today. However, Walt wasn’t one to compromise – so he may have pushed through this vision even now.
What do you think? Do you agree that there are things that would have to be different about the original EPCOT concept if it was designed now? Let us know on Facebook and in the comments!
