The Politics of Neighbors

The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town. By Andrew Ross. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999. 352 pages. $25.05 (cloth).

Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity. Edited by Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin. New York: Verso, 1999. 312 pages. $83.50 (cloth). $28.00 (paper).

DESPITE THE MANY WAYS IN WHICH THE LIMITS OF PHYSICAL PROXIMITY CAN NOW BE transcended--through telephones, fax machines, televisions, and computers--we continue to live in environments that require face to face contact with others. This contact ranges from ordering at a drive-through restaurant to being packed into a subway for the daily commute. For this reason, as Michael Sorkin argues in the introduction to Giving Ground, it is important to recognize the continuing role of physical locations in the politics and representations of the city. "While the notion of public space was never meant to refer exclusively to a geographically delimited space that was open to all, it seems indisputable that the broader notion cannot dispense with such spaces" (5). Giving Ground and Celebration Chronicles by Andrew Ross emphasize the continuing importance of physical space in struggles over the goals of city planning.

These goals have frequently been contested by those historically harmed by government subsidized suburbanization, but recently they have also been questioned by those who have historically benefited. In particular, relentless expansion of suburban sprawl became a contentious issue in suburban localities throughout the United States in the 1998 elections and has even been addressed in the 2000 presidential campaign by Al Gore. Dissatisfaction with traditional cities and suburbs led residents to move to Celebration, Florida. This "new town" was built to look and feel like an old town, meaning, in comparison to typical suburban development, higher densities, smaller lot sizes and more mixing of commercial and residential properties. Perhaps most important, Celebration was designed for pedestrians rather than automobiles with the hope that through increased face to face contact a stronger community would develop.

The design ideals embodied in Celebration come out of a movement among urban planners and architects for a "new urbanism". New urbanism got its start, fittingly, in Florida when in the early 1980s architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk designed the recreational town of Seaside in the image of a small, pre-World War II town. To the surprise of many developers, Seaside was a financial success and sparked the development of several other projects following this model, but, as Ross points out, Celebration stands out as the largest successful development of its type dedicated to year-round residents. Of course, Celebration is also unique and has received significant publicity because it was developed by the Disney Company on land it owned near its theme parks in central Florida.

Although Walt Disney had dreamed of a utopian industrial town near Disney World to be called EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), Celebration emerged out of much more practical concerns. In the context of increased restrictions on growth in Florida, Disney used the proposal for a residential development along with the creation of a wilderness preserve to secure the necessary infrastructure and development rights for the expansion of their theme parks (277-84). At the same time, although Celebration does not follow the model of EPCOT, Disney did hope that this town might be an alternative to urban design problems. While Disney theme parks created a fantasy urban environment, here was a chance to demonstrate success in building a concrete place where people carried out their daily lives. Many of the residents who moved to Celebration held similar expectations. "They had vacationed, year in and year out, at the theme parks and were accustomed to high standards of customer satisfaction" (107).

In his chapter from Giving Ground, Dean MacCannell suggests the residents of Celebration wanted to live in a Disney movie. "Clearly what is being sold is not a two-hour celluloid fantasy but an entire fantasy life&quot...