Walt Disney did n’t determine out to revolutionize urban plan when he created Disneyland — that ’s what hisExperimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow , or EPCOT , was for . But whereas EPCOT never became anything more than a sort of lasting world ’s sightly , it was Disneyland and particularly its Main Street , USA , that in the end transfer the way we call back about the built surroundings .
It ’s hard to magnify how radical a constructed cityscape Main Street , USA , was when it spread out in Anaheim in 1955 . Across the U.S. , cities and township were tearing out their historic downtowns in favor of auto - oriented cityscapes : sprawling parking lots , street build to highway specification , large insular construction that disdain the metropolis outside .
Among the tens of millions of Americans who strolled into Disneyland , this innovative way of city - devising drew unfavorable comparing with what they saw in Main Street , USA . It felt good to walk through Disney ’s city , with its varied facades and approachable architecture . Pedestrians were evenwelcome in the roadway , which they shared with motorcars and horse cavalry - drawn railway car .
But could Disney ’s nostalgic reimagining of little - township America in reality change the fashion designer and contriver approached city ? That ’s the conclusion renowned architectural historian Vincent Scully — an relentless criticwho oncewrotethat Disney “ so vulgarize everything he touches that fact lose all force”—reaches in his foreword to Building a Dream : The Art of Disney Architecture ( 1996 ):
In the full stop of the fifties and sixties when Disney came up with Main Street , it and indeed all traditional urbanism was disdain by modern architects and planners alike . Disney , with whatever hokum , resurrect it , and in doing so bring into being a public consciousness of architecture ’s fundamental dimension , which has to be that of the town , the metropolis , the human settlement entire . So the visitant to Main Street , footer all , and looking for all the world like histrion in a play — how impress that was , because the city is , after all , a theater for human acts — took back home with them the unshakable conviction that their own Main Streets might be saved from the automobiles and the shopping malls and all the horror of Redevelopment that were destroy them everywhere .
But Main Street did more than provide a foil to modernist urban design . It also , Scully writes , inspired Americans to think more carefully about their architectural inheritance :
… for whatever complicated reasons , Historic Preservation grew potent every year from the hatchway of Disneyland onward , and the incomparably pop mint movement it represent is beginning to bring to realisation everywhere those revivals of the vulgar and classic traditions of architecture , and of traditional urbanism , which Disneyland , as perceive by Charles Moore long ago , so efficaciously suggested . This has been the capital architectural accomplishment of the preceding generation , and Disneyland encounter an respectable part in it . [ emphasis added ]
Images : Topandbottomphotos from Flickr userrandar . Used under a Creative Commons license .
ArchitectureDisneylandsouthlandurbanism
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