I have a friend living in Celebration currently, and we have friends who were looking at building there and ultimately didn't. We considered Celebration ourselves, but ultimately decided not to for other reasons. My wife studies architecture, so many of these comments were shaped by her education.
Both Celebration, and apparently Westhaven, were shaped by a planning movement called "New Urbanisim" which sought to re-create a community environment and reduce the impact of the car-culture that has developed in the suburbs. The basics of it are simple - make it easy to get to a city center and develop a sense of community around that center. Its not a new idea (Walt Disney was proposing something similar in EPCOT, and he was basing his work on even older proposals), but it has gotten attention since communities like Seaside, Florida used it with great success.
Advocates of New Urbanisim, however, largely try to forget Celebration, however. In their minds, Celebration made several mistakes:
- Although the city core and surrounding residences were well planned, there are a lot of houses that are in Celebration, but not in walking distance to the town center. From the looks of the Westhaven master plan, they may be doing the same.
- The city core is more for tourists (high end galleries, tourist retail shops, restaurants) and less for the residents (only one small food store (which I heard was closing and being replaced by a supermarket on the outskirts of town), no hardware store (at least last time I was there)).
- Celebration rapidly outpriced itself and reduced its focus on the lower-end, affordable, mixed-use housing areas. I've even heard they're building a gated community inside Celebration - so much for being neighborly.
Celebration's school was also widely praised and widly criticized. Donating land for a school is common for planned communities, but I would still pay attention to development plans for the school if that ever happens.
Raven commented on the number of rules. I was actually surprised by how few rules there were. Celebration's regulations ran to 7 pages. A planned community I lived in in Houston ran to 63. I've also read that many of the rules were routinely ignored.
In the end, we decided against Celebration largley because of its location (we wanted to be near family in New York), but visiting it certainly shaped our thoughts about finding a community. We've lived in regularly planned communities, and probably wouldn't choose one again. On the other hand, we likely would try to find a town that tried to accomplish many of the same goals.
Good luck with the building!
(Great... my first post and I'm probably sounding like a flake. :lookaroun )
