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That's because the city and the park are looking more like each other every day. The heart of Disney World is Main Street U.S.A. -- constructed, at the creator's specifications, so that the buildings are subtly miniaturized. "This costs more," Walt Disney said, "but made the street a toy, and the imagination can play more freely with a toy. Besides, people like to think their world is somehow more grown up than Papa's was." Now architect Andres Duany wants to bring a residential equivalent of Main Street to eastern Orange County. His proposal is named Avalon Park, a 9,400-acre community made up of compact neighborhoods with convivial squares. Like Disney World, Avalon would be strollable and full of shops and parks, and like Disney World, it would be built in the middle of nowhere. In nearby Osceola County, Disney is getting into the business of residential utopias, harking back, in a way, to Walt's original concept for Epcot. His Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was intended to be sealed under a glass dome to keep out heat and humidity. It was to have had stores, apartments, schools, churches, offices, marinas, parks, golf courses, a monorail, a vacuum-tube trash-disposal system, a central computer controlling everything from streetlights to hotel reservations -- and it was to have housed temporary residents who were to abide by Disney codes of dress and behavior.
Epcot never took that form, in part, according to author John Taylor, because Walt realized he would have had to subsidize residents to attract them to his closely monitored community. Epcot today is a permanent world's fair that includes two sets of pavilions: scientific ones that celebrate mankind's technological mastery of the universe and a clutch of foreign lands without masses of foreigners -- 11 cultural boutiques that fit around a man-made lagoon as a symbol of human fellowship. "Probably it's much cleaner here than some of those countries you would go to," says visitor Sandy Hyde of Hacienda Heights, Calif.
The current generation of social engineers has proposed an Epcot-inspired "new town" called Celebration, where the cultural center will be known as a "learning resort," streets will be "themed" in styles borrowed from Charleston and Venice, and a special site will showcase industrial wizardry used to design everything from tennis balls to compact discs. The 8,400-acre property, near Kissimmee, will also have a grocery store with computerized carts that display suggested menus.
The concept of Epcot is resonating through another fantastical project, which is being promoted off Port Canaveral, 40 miles to the east. Developers have proposed a $1 billion "city of tomorrow" that would be built on the world's largest cruise ship, capable of handling 5,600 passengers. The floating city, like Epcot, would mix pleasure and pedagogy: alongside the three hotel towers, casinos and villages aboard the nearly quarter-mile-long vessel would be a 100,000-volume library and a giant conference center. At sea or in port, Phoenix World City would be a "place where the best of a civilization converges and cross-fertilizes to produce a fuller way of life," according to a florid brochure.