Celebration, as a New Urbanist development, does share a lot in common with EPCOT. Both are heavily influenced by Ebenezer Howard's concept of the Garden City (Garden Cities of To-morrow, 1898), satellite cities with their own urban center that is then surrounded by residences, green space and some industrial zones. Howard's diagram of a Garden City could easily pass as a diagram of EPCOT and the organization of New Urbanism, while less radial, is also similar. Both EPCOT and New Urbanism reject the automobile and envision people living and working in the same community. The big difference mot people point to is that most New Urbanist developments are not transit oriented developments like EPCOT. Instead, New Urbanism more stresses pedestrian oriented development, which is itself a requirement of transit oriented development.
The idea of "All of Walt Disney World is EPCOT" was a post-Walt notion; part of the hesitancy and trepidation regarding how to handle EPCOT. Lake Buena Vista was framed as the residential component. Even then, EPCOT did not just have a residential component, it was supposed to be a live-work community. While New Urbanism claims to promote a diversity of housing types and costs, in most cases that is not the reality. The "urban" core of Celebration and other New Urbanist places are dominated by service industries like retail and dining. The result is that those who tend to work in Celebration and other developments cannot afford to actually live in the community while those who can still drive their cars elsewhere to work. Celebration further hinders the notion of live-work by having a highway physically separate Celebration Health and Celebration Place from the rest of Celebration, including its urban core.
