EPCOT (concept)

This article is about the unrealized concept. For its theme park successor, see Epcot. "Florida Project" redirects here. For the 2017 film, see The Florida Project.
The city's central commercial areas and Cosmopolitan Hotel. Concept art by Herbert Ryman.
Overlay of the 1966 plans for EPCOT (orange) and contemporary situation (blue).

The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, shortened to EPCOT, was an unfinished concept for a planned community, intended to sit on a swath of undeveloped land near Orlando, Florida. It was created by Walt Disney in collaboration with the designers at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1960s.[1][2] Based on ideas stemming from modernism and futurism, and inspired by architectural literature about city planning, Disney intended EPCOT to be a utopian autocratic company town. One of the primary stated aims of EPCOT was to replace urban sprawl as the organizing force of community planning in the United States in the 1960s. Disney intended EPCOT to be a real city, and it was planned to feature commercial, residential, industrial, and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system, that would, he said, "Never cease to be a living blueprint of the future".[3][4]

Following Disney's death in 1966, EPCOT plans were shelved. In 1971, Walt Disney World emerged, with EPCOT opening in 1982 as a theme park and influencing the nearby community of Celebration, Florida.[5] Elements from the original EPCOT vision endured, shaping aspects of the modern Disney World park, such as the Monorail System and the Utilidor system.

  1. ^ Barrier, J. Michael (2007). The animated man : a life of Walt Disney. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24117-6. OCLC 70864455.
  2. ^ Acuna, Kirsten (June 26, 2012). "Walt Disney's Original Plan For Epcot Sounded Like An Eerie Futuristic Dystopia". businessinsider.com. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  3. ^ Gennawey, Sam (2011). Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City. Theme Park Press. pp. xiii. ISBN 978-1941500262.
  4. ^ Bowers, Alan. "FUTURE WORLD(S): A Critique of Disney's EPCOT and Creating a Futuristic Curriculum". Electronic Theses and Dissertations: 58, 74–75, 84–85, 99–105 – via Georgia Southern University College of Graduate Studies.
  5. ^ "Epcot – Disney – Orlando". orlandoviagem.com.br. 2012-06-27. Archived from the original on 2012-09-06. Retrieved 2012-06-27.