Lecture 2: Disney's Postmodern City

July 17th 1955: Disneyland opens for the first time in Anaheim, California. In the mid-1960s Disney starts buying swamp land in Florida. The Reedy Creek Act, 'clarifies the district's authority to perform work of drainage, flood and pest control; amplifies the district's authority to build and maintain sewer system, police and fire protection, airport and parking facilities and to regulate and administer land use and planning within the district limits' Disney Vice President, Don Tatum. Disneyland, Florida is 27,433 square acres, that is approximately the same size as Manhatten and twice as large as San Francisco. Disneyland had total control over the area: the right ot build a nuclear reactor, an airport and a municipal court along with wide ranging fiscal powers. Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow: EPCOT. Disney techniques that are used outside theme parks in the 'real' world. Shopping malls adopt Disney's approach: 'Fun environments and an unique shopping expereince'. The postmodern city is a centre of 'consumption, play and entertainment saturated with signs and images'(Featherstone: 1991). We also referenced Umberto Eco's 'Travels in Hyppereality' (San Diego: 1983 in today's lecture. Postmodern citizens: 'play with and celebrate the artificiality, randomness and superficaility of the fantastic melange of fictions adn strange values which are to be found in the fashions and popular cultures of cities' (Featherstone: 1991). In the seminar, Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulations' was discussed in relation to today's topic. Baudrillard introduced the idea that Disneyland is 'presented as imaginary in order to make us all believe that the rest of America is real, when in fact all of Los Angles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but of the order of simulation'.