Walt Disney himself wanted to build a city. His vision was completely different from what later came to be, however, and it’s a little creepy too.
Walt Disney essentially wanted to run the city himself. The city Walt dreamed up was known as The Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow (EPCOT). He wanted 20,000 people to live in his city, and wanted industries to test out their newest technology there, where it would be on display for the rest of the world.
All of the people living in his city would be tenants, paying rent to Disney. Literally everyone in the city would work for Disney in one way or another. No residents would be retirees. Everyone would be living by Walt Disney’s rules.
That’s not even the extent of control Walt wanted over the city. He bought up swampland in Florida and then petitioned the state to allow him complete control over the land, including building codes. To this day, Disney still has the control over this land. They could build a nuclear reactor on it if they so choose.
Walt Disney died soon after his plan went into motion, and the Disney board of directors, who weren’t so excited about the plan, stopped it and focused on their own plan of creating a theme.
