The original EPCOT as imagined by Walt Disney was a master-planned city, with all the pleasant amenities and cleverest design you could imagine in the 1960's: Walkable areas, clean public transit, no traffic congestion, homes furnished with the latest in technology and appliances. It was his greatest ambition at the end of his life to make it a reality.

But it didn't happen. Namely, because of how much central control would be given to one man and/or his company to pull it off. The plan in its early iterations essentially meant that if you lived in EPCOT, you forfeited certain freedoms, such as what goes in your home, where you worked, and so on.

This game gave me a good chuckle as a Sim City fan. I'm guilty of complaining about politicians of all levels. But I don't envy their position of having to cut through the vines of competing motives and regulations. And at the same time, as a citizen, I'm not sure I would opt for the Utopian alternative.

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turbocon 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Disney (the company) did eventually make a kind of Epcot - Celebration, Florida[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida

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dgently7 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

scrolled down like 100 posts to find one that actually referenced the op's game directly.

I'm pretty sure the point of the game was to make a statement and make people think/talk and boy-howdy op you did a great job.

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crooked-v 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the bigger reason the original "EPCOT as a city" didn't happen is that once Walt passed, everyone else in the company looked at the plan and knew it would be a bottomless money pit from day 1.

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chrisco255 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I think EPCOT could have been quite successful. The Villages, Florida was centrally planned and designed by many Disney architects (among others) and it is hugely successful and profitable.

Walt's brother, Roy (who remained after Walt's passing), was not the same visionary that Walt was. Simple as that. Most people would never have taken the risks Walt did with the company. Even the idea of a theme park that has tens of thousands of employees and requires millions of people to fly in from all over the world to be profitable sustainably, was quite a bold idea in the 1950s.

I regret that Walt passed too young. Florida would probably be covered in a large monorail network had he lived a couple more decades. And Epcot as a city would have been a tourist destination in its own right, and might have influenced urban development elsewhere.

	▲	pbhjpbhj 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Monorail? Monorail!