Project Future, an eye opening lecture
April 14, 2011
I was watching some videos on YUI theater when I came across an inspiring talk on the future and on Disneyland by Douglas Crockford. Who knew that the man behind JSON was a big Disney fan? And who knew Disney was a big fan of combating urban sprawl and suburbanization? So much so that he was in the process of constructing an autonomously-governed experimental city? I can't wait to go to Disneyland again to appreciate a dream that was all but forgotten, but is in the process of returning. If you have a spare lunch break, grab some food and watch this lecture. I enjoyed this snippet:
Main Street is the first thing you see when you enter Disneyland, and when the park opened this only appeared to be about 50 years old. It wasn't an ancient city, it wasn't a fantasy city, it was meant to look like something that we had recently lost. Most cities still had buildings that looked like this except now they were in serious disrepair, or boarded up, or failing, or collapsing, or may have already been replaced by ugly post-War buildings. He was trying to set this up with some gentle nostalgia — remember just a few decades ago how wonderful cities were? How you could walk around and do lots of things? There's shopping, there's entertainment, there's retail. It's all there and you can just walk around, and it's really pleasant.More reading: Wikipedia - Reedy Creek Improvement District - the land that Walt bought in Florida Wikipedia - Urban Sprawl - a very rich entry on the problem Douglas Crockford's Homepage - Super retro!