No, Walt wanted to build the City of the Future. He became interested in the idea of Imagineering urban planning, including infrastructure, transportation, public spaces, living spaces, work spaces, and architecture. He realized that if a city was planned in much the same way Disneyland was planned, many of the problems inherent of modern cities could be solved, including traffic, inner city decay, employment, poverty, and even crime! He believed WDW (with the real EPCOT at its center) could demonstrate this. If he could prove these ideas true through WDW and EPCOT, it would have become the ideal city in which future developments and redevelopments throughout the nation would attempt to emulate.
This completely scared his successors. Roy had faith in his brother's plan but was too old to see it though, perfering instead to focus on the resort part of Walt's plan, leaving the EPCOT part of the plan to a younger generation of executives in the future who could see it through. That never happened. Instead, the younger generation executives became history revisionists and planted the idea of Disney wanting to build a permanent world's fair - an urban legend that is furthest from the truth. If you put yourself in their shoes, you can understand why.
- The business of curing urban ills was a business the company had zero experience in. Almost as if they felt guilty of deviating from Walt's intentions, they created divisions to sell urban transportation systems to cities, such as the one that was later sold to Bombardiar that held the patents of both the monorail and WEDway Peoplemover systems (two systems were built outside of Disney's parks: one at the Houston Airport and another underneath the capital buildings of Washington DC for exclusive use by US lawmakers).
- The unnerving idea that a company would undemocratically control the lives of some 30,000 people was a big, big problem that - understandably - the executives wanted no part of.
Walt Disney thought he knew how to make it work, but despite the fact that models, plans, blue prints, art rendering, etc. had been thoroughly developed by the time Walt Disney passed, it were political and executive questions that (while probably answered in the mind of Walt Disney) were totally not understood by any of his successors.
I can totally understand Walt's passion and interest in this subject. To do it right, any successor has to have that same passion, interest, and drive - which non of them had/have. Some projects around the world are finally being constructed and will put some of Walt's ideas for EPCOT to the test, such. as MASDAR in Abu Dabi.
