Orlando Unmasked

26 February 2007 - 7:00am

Walt Disney's utopian dream forever changed Orlando, Florida, and laid the blueprint for the new American metropolis.

"Everything happening to America today is happening here, and it's far removed from the cookie-cutter suburbanization of life a generation ago. The Orlando region has become Exhibit A for the ascendant power of our cities' exurbs: blobby coalescences of look-alike, overnight, amoeba-like concentrations of population far from city centers. These huge, sprawling communities are where more and more Americans choose to be, the place where job growth is fastest, home building is briskest, and malls and megachurches are multiplying as newcomers keep on coming. Who are all these people? They're you, they're me, and increasingly, they are nothing like the blue-eyed 'Dick and Jane' of mythical suburban America..."

Source: National Geographic, February 23, 2007

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The new American metropolis...?

"Walt Disney's utopian dream forever changed Orlando, Florida, and laid the blueprint for the new American metropolis."

God... I hope not.

Then again, National Geographic stories are mostly puff pieces. They consistently do an amazing job of looking at every third world sh**-hole through rose-coloured glasses. Always good photography, though.

Christopher C.

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