Managing Disney's Vast Public Gardens

3 September 2003 - 12:00pm

Walt Disney World Resort in Florida contains one of the world's largest public gardens.

"Some 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) are landscaped for the 47-square-mile (122-square-kilometer) resort's theme parks, hotel properties, golf courses, and campground, forming perhaps one of the largest public gardens to be found anywhere...Disney's 750 horticultural professionals plant three million bedding plants annually and tend 175,000 trees and more than four million shrubs. There are 13,000 rose bushes alone...Plants found on Disney's property come from 50 countries."

Source: National Geographic, August 28, 2003
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.