Celebration, Florida - Ultimate low in branding, or a positive turn?

[Taverner]

OK....Celebration Florida is the planned community based around "new urbanism" in that the idea is that everything is within walking distance, shops, restaraunts, etc. Parks replace backyards, and usually severeal homes, not fenced in, share a common park like yard.

BUT, this is the product of Disney co., and is the biggest extension of their branding. It is "Disney Town" as the "Market Street USA" is a happy, fun filled world with no threatening elements, just like Main St USA in Disneyland.

So what are your thoughts regarding this?

[troublemaker]

1. Suicide comes to mind.

[freetobegay]

2. If I could afford to live there, I would.

I love the small town charm, even though I am Gay, I think it couls still work.

[Taverner]

4. Disney has always been gay-friendly

so it could work, but their prices are like California prices...

[kikiek]

3. What are the home prices? Will the low income be able to live safely also?

Or if you're not wealthy are you dangerous? In my eyes it creates a fantasyland, and good luck to those brought up in it who later face the real world. I also am against gated communities. I think neighborhoods without diversity breed intolerance. Diversity in my eyes includes income, race, and sexual orientation.

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Nice place to visit (and I have several times)

but I would not want to live there. Home prices are VERY expensive. More Segway scooters per capita than anywhere else I have ever been.

[kikiek]

7. Talk about stress. Having to keep up with the Jones' and Stepford

sounding to boot.

[freetobegay]

8. Bush better stay away then! He can't handle those!

LOL

[Mrs_Beastman]

6. I heard they were creating towns like this

because of the US weight problem, to encourage ppl to walk and not drive everywhere....who knows. :eyes:

[freetobegay]

9. Why the rolling eyes!

Americans are fat! We should be walking more!

[Mrs_Beastman]

14. The eye roll is because it's such a big topic (no pun intended)

If big business was so worried about people's weight, they would stop putting huge amounts of sugar and fat in food. My husband cooked dinner yesturday...from a 'homestyle bakes' thing he bought. It had 400 for a one cup serving. That's absurd. We are a country of junk food junkies and they like us that way.

It's sad the only solution someone has come up with is selling us something else ( a house) instead of not making high calorie food cheaper and more accessible then real food.

Just my two cents...

[kikiek]

10. I don't believe that is the real reason. Too exclusionary. Sounds like

it will appeal to people who believe the rest of us are just too plain scary to live among.

[Mrs_Beastman]

15. good point

[Eurobabe]

11. I live in a new-urbanism type community

in Central Virginia, we don't have any stores or shops here, our development is too small -- but we all have sidewalks, picket fences, detached garages on a shared alleyway. It has taken some getting used to having neighbors less than 20 ft. on either side of me, but in general I have seen some really interesting things develop here: everyone really cares about their neighbors, swapping vacation chores (watering plants, getting mail, etc.) often having parties out in the common areas or alley.

This is the first place that I have EVER lived in that I have actually gotten to 1) KNOW my neighbors, 2) feel a sense of community.

So while I am against Disney-izing eveything, I wish more builders would get with the program to replicate neighborhoods built on historic plans. It saves more green space and encourages people to interact more. I am thinking of writing an article about my experience for an academic journal.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. I've seen some decent new urbanist communities, but

what I've seen of Celebration looks like a stage set, not a real town.

[mitchum]

13. I hated Disney crap even as a child...

and nothing has changed

[Bamboo]

16. Lights and Lemonade.

In America abstract things are sold as commodities,the price therefore can be abstract or put another way,crazy.New Urbanism is selling the abstract idea of "community" to the highest bidder and there are people who believe it can be purchased.Disney and New Urbanism are a match because they make promises of happiness which can be purchased and have made it into a science extracting maximum profit.It is easier to make more on a scarce item so I guess that paying alot for "community" means that it is in short supply but does anyone wonder how it got to be that way?Architects say it is the isolation of suburbia I say it is the commodification of happiness.Happiness got to be scarce when it was connected to what kind of house you have or where you go on vacation when before happiness was too cheap to meter.I think that the scarcity of happiness is linked to the compactness of New Urbanism,happiness is a small morsel which takes alot of effort to acquire,doctors and lawyers work hard to get their degrees and buy houses in Celebration,it does not seem to me like much reward.

[Lisa]

17. there's a book out on Celebration ...

http://www.americansc.org.uk/Online/Celebration.htm

"In his recent book, The Celebration Chronicles (Verso, 2000), the academic Andrew Ross recounts his experience of going native, when he spent a sabbatical year living in an apartment in Celebration. He notes how the Celebration Company quickly encountered the discontent of the residents over the shoddy construction of their homes and the progressive, non-competitive education at the local school."

"No knee-jerk Disney basher, Ross identifies a strange kind of civic spirit emerging out of the dissatisfaction of the Celebration residents with the tarnishing of their dreams. These people simply refuse to conform to the Stepford Wives stereotype, as one of them cries: ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’ve got pixie dust coming out of my ass!’"

*I use this reading in my environmental aesthetics class, and the students always laugh at the "pixie dust" comment.