Would you live in Disney World?

epcotisbest

Well-Known Member
No, if there were other components then it would trending towards mixed use, the opposite of sprawl. Housing that is isolated from other uses is sprawl. Other uses are already isolated in the greater area, so it is only contributing to the larger sprawl.
Pizza

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TP2000

Well-Known Member
I think I would get sick of Disney World if I lived here, I would love to get an apartment at Epcot city if they ever built it to live in part time. http://www.disneygoldenoak.com

I could never live in WDW, or on any Disney property. I wouldn't even want an Epcot apartment, as much as I love classic 1980's EPCOT Center and Walt's original 1966 vision for it that never got built.

WDW of the 21st century is becoming so blandly corporate and full of smarmy Disney Parks Blog propaganda selling from charmless cubicle dwellers in Celebration office parks, that it would just be stifling and oppressive to live in that corporate environment. Live Disney, eat Disney, sleep Disney, work Disney, play Disney, wear Disney, vote Disney. Disney, Disney, Disney. Enough!

I'm going to now go out on the patio, put non-Disney music on the hifi, and have some brunch and a Mimosa and think about nothing Disney-related to cleanse.
 

epcotisbest

Well-Known Member
Then do explain what is sprawl if it is not low density areas with functional isolation. Do explain how Golden Oak follows any of the ideas of EPCOT beyond just having housing.
Not talking about Epcot. You said Golden Oak is an embarrassment and sprawl. I countered it is not. Golden Oak is a component of sprawl. The other components of sprawl are already around the WDW area, but that does not make Golden Oak sprawl.
There are five components of sprawl.
From Suburban Nation:

If sprawl truly is destructive, why is it allowed to continue? The beginning of an answer lies in sprawl's seductive simplicity, the fact that it consists of very few homogeneous components - five in all - which can be arranged in almost any way. It is appropriate to review these parts individually, since they always occur independently. While one component may be adjacent to another, the dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component is strictly segregated from the others.

Housing subdivisions, also called clusters and pods. These places consist only of residences. They are sometimes called villages, towns, and neighborhoods by their developers, which is misleading, since those terms denote places which are not exclusively residential and which provide an experiential richness not available in a housing tract. Subdivisions can be identified as such by their contrived names, which tend toward the romantic -Pheasant Mill Crossing- and often pay tribute to the natural or historic resource they have displaced.

Shopping centers, also called strip centers, shopping malls, and big-box retail. These are places exclusively for shopping. They come in every size, from the Quick Mart on the corner to the Mall of America, but they are all places to which one is unlikely to walk. The conventional shopping center can be easily distinguished from its traditional main-street counterpart by its lack of housing or offices, its single-story height, and its parking lot between the building and the roadway.

Office parks and business parks. These are places only for work. Derived from the modernist architectural vision of the building standing free in the park, the contemporary office park is usually made of boxes in parking lots. Still imagined as a pastoral workplace isolated in nature, it has kept its idealistic name and also its quality of isolation, but in practice it is more likely to be surrounded by highways than by countryside.

Civic institutions. The fourth component of suburbia is public buildings: the town halls, churches, schools, and other places where people gather for communication and culture. In traditional neighborhoods, these buildings often serve as neighborhood focal points, but in suburbia they take an altered form: large and infrequent, generally unadorned owing to limited funding, surrounded by parking, and located nowhere in particular. The school pictured here shows what a dramatic evolution this building type has undergone in the past thirty years. A comparison between the size of the parking lot and the size of the building is revealing: this is a school to which no child will ever walk. Because pedestrian access is usually nonexistent, and because the dispersion of surrounding homes often makes school buses impractical, schools in the new suburbs are designed based on the assumption of massive automotive transportation.

Roadways. The fifth component of sprawl consists of the miles of pavement that are necessary to connect the other four disassociated components. Since each piece of suburbia serves only one type of activity, and since daily life involves a wide variety of activities, the residents of suburbia spend an unprecedented amount of time and money moving from one place to the next. Since most of this motion takes place in singly occupied automobiles, even a sparsely populated area can generate the traffic of a much larger traditional town.
 

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Not talking about Epcot. You said Golden Oak is an embarrassment and sprawl. I countered it is not. Golden Oak is a component of sprawl. The other components of sprawl are already around the WDW area, but that does not make Golden Oak sprawl.
There are five components of sprawl.
From Suburban Nation:

If sprawl truly is destructive, why is it allowed to continue? The beginning of an answer lies in sprawl's seductive simplicity, the fact that it consists of very few homogeneous components - five in all - which can be arranged in almost any way. It is appropriate to review these parts individually, since they always occur independently. While one component may be adjacent to another, the dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component is strictly segregated from the others.

Housing subdivisions, also called clusters and pods. These places consist only of residences. They are sometimes called villages, towns, and neighborhoods by their developers, which is misleading, since those terms denote places which are not exclusively residential and which provide an experiential richness not available in a housing tract. Subdivisions can be identified as such by their contrived names, which tend toward the romantic -Pheasant Mill Crossing- and often pay tribute to the natural or historic resource they have displaced.

Shopping centers, also called strip centers, shopping malls, and big-box retail. These are places exclusively for shopping. They come in every size, from the Quick Mart on the corner to the Mall of America, but they are all places to which one is unlikely to walk. The conventional shopping center can be easily distinguished from its traditional main-street counterpart by its lack of housing or offices, its single-story height, and its parking lot between the building and the roadway.

Office parks and business parks. These are places only for work. Derived from the modernist architectural vision of the building standing free in the park, the contemporary office park is usually made of boxes in parking lots. Still imagined as a pastoral workplace isolated in nature, it has kept its idealistic name and also its quality of isolation, but in practice it is more likely to be surrounded by highways than by countryside.

Civic institutions. The fourth component of suburbia is public buildings: the town halls, churches, schools, and other places where people gather for communication and culture. In traditional neighborhoods, these buildings often serve as neighborhood focal points, but in suburbia they take an altered form: large and infrequent, generally unadorned owing to limited funding, surrounded by parking, and located nowhere in particular. The school pictured here shows what a dramatic evolution this building type has undergone in the past thirty years. A comparison between the size of the parking lot and the size of the building is revealing: this is a school to which no child will ever walk. Because pedestrian access is usually nonexistent, and because the dispersion of surrounding homes often makes school buses impractical, schools in the new suburbs are designed based on the assumption of massive automotive transportation.

Roadways. The fifth component of sprawl consists of the miles of pavement that are necessary to connect the other four disassociated components. Since each piece of suburbia serves only one type of activity, and since daily life involves a wide variety of activities, the residents of suburbia spend an unprecedented amount of time and money moving from one place to the next. Since most of this motion takes place in singly occupied automobiles, even a sparsely populated area can generate the traffic of a much larger traditional town.
From the beginning, I said Golden Oak was an embarrassment because it is in opposition to the ideas behind EPCOT.

To see how Golden Oak is sprawl, just compare it to Duany's own Seaside, FL or even Celebration, FL. Golden Oak fits right into the definition of 'Housing subdivision' and is segregated from all other uses. The development has no other uses included. Those components Duany defines are not required to all be together, because if there were always together they really would not be as destructive since there would be some more variety. The whole problem he outlines is separation of uses. Reread the first paragraph you quoted. It ends with, "It is appropriate to review these parts individually, since they always occur independently. While one component may be adjacent to another, the dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component is strictly segregated from the others."

We can also look at his own checklist for traditional neighborhood development (TND) where Golden Oak fails muster. Some highlights:
  • Does the TND provide a relatively balanced mix of housing, workplace, shopping, recreational, and institutional uses?
  • Is the neighborhood center the location of retail space—a corner store is required (subsidized if necessary)—and office space, ideally located in mixed-use buildings?
  • Does the neighborhood reserve at least one prominent, honorific site for a civic building?
  • Is there a hierarchy of streets?
  • Is there a diversity of housing types located within close proximity to each other?
 

copcarguyp71

Well-Known Member
Take it as you will....

Sprawl as defined by Cornell University... http://cardi.cornell.edu/cals/devsoc/outreach/cardi/programs/land-use/sprawl/definition_sprawl.cfm

In summation:

The Definition of Sprawl
The term sprawl, as used by land developers, planners and governmental institutions, refers to the change in trends of land usage, and the change in demographics across given geographies.

Sprawl is generally defined as the increased development of land in suburban and rural areas outside of their respective urban centers. This increased development of real estate in the outskirts of towns, villages and metropolitan areas is quite often accompanied by a lack of development, redevelopment or reuse of landwithin the urban centers themselves.

This trend is often referred to as both urban sprawl and rural sprawl. Although these two terms might sound contradictory, they are ironically referring to the same phenomenon—that is, the movement of developmentfrom urban areas, to rural areas.

Framed in other terms, sprawl refers to the slow decentralization of human occupancy. That is, communities are requiring more land and space to supply the same given population with homes, workplaces, shopping locations and recreation spaces.

The U.S. has experienced a statistically significant increase in the rate of sprawl in the last several decades, and particularly in the last several years. The trend has led to the large-scale loss of natural forests, fields and other undeveloped land, and this increase in land development has not corresponded proportionately to human population increases. It is therefore population redistribution that has led to a wide variety of consequences.
 

StarWarsGirl

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
If money were not an issue...I would definitely choose to live in WDW. Maybe not directly in the park, but someplace on property nearby...yup.

I'm actually considering moving down to Florida in a few years after I graduate college. For multiple reasons, one of which is health (I cannot handle MD's winters). Being close to WDW is just a nice bonus. :)
 

yensid67

Well-Known Member
According to him, they enter through a small gate to the left of the main entrance and his stepfather just shows his ID or something. Not sure how valid his story is...

That is true, Cast Members and their guests enter a separate gate from regular guests. An I worked at Epcot and MK and yes you do get somewhat bored, but its not like any other bordom! You are there to make the guests dreams come true and create magical memories for THEM! YOU HAVE TO BE CUSTOMER SERVICE ORIENTED to work and live there!
 
Having arrived back to a cold & wet London yesterday after two weeks staying on property (OKW & YC), we are seriously considering making Florida & in particular Celebration part of our retirement plans.
As much as we love it out there we both feel that we would struggle to live there permanently but could definitely see ourselves spending the summer in London & the winter out there.
Celebration was lovely & it's close proximity to the parks would be a huge bonus.
 

Matt_Black

Well-Known Member
I'd hide away on Tom Sawyer Island, living like a wild man in the trees, subsisting off of discarded turkey legs. Cast members would eventually spread stories about a phantom haunting the place, but most would consign these wild yarns to legend.
 

epcotisbest

Well-Known Member
I'd hide away on Tom Sawyer Island, living like a wild man in the trees, subsisting off of discarded turkey legs. Cast members would eventually spread stories about a phantom haunting the place, but most would consign these wild yarns to legend.

Don't forget you can sneak over to Aloha Isle and gather Dole Whip leftovers to wash down the turkey legs. Problem is, not many people toss anything more than an empty cup.
 

Phonedave

Well-Known Member
Not as a permanent residence. Here's why:

I detest Walmart.
No 24 hour bodegas.
No Thai food.
No Halal food.
Can't get a decent slice anywhere.
No nightlife.
No seasons.
No snow.
Too far from any beach.
Too far from any mountain.

All of the above (except I really don't detest Walmart - I may shop there only 3 or 4 times a year, but I don't detest it and Halal does not matter to me - the religious aspect that is)

I will also add

No bagels
Summer heat and humidity.


Really, to me, no one place has it all. but the idea of moving to central Florida just because Walt Disney World is nearby has no appeal to me.

-dave
 

Private Duck

New Member
Golden Oak looks very nice- and I am sure that I would enjoy living there as a certified "Disney nut" (as most of us are). That said from a million dollar plus "investment" POV I feel the jury is still out on whether there will be enough celebrities, South American jet-setters and Americans "of means" with a particularly strong Disney "fetish" to fully support the pricing over time. I could be wrong though. Disney has certainly demonstrated the "power of the Mouse" with DVC (and hooked me among many, many others) albeit at a much lower price point.

Ultimately though- I think I would be much more comfortable taking that million PLUS to Winter Park and having the security of a long-established/desirable community and decent school district with the added cultural benefits of Rollins College (Cornell Fine Arts Museum), The Morse Museum, Bach Festival Society, pretty churches and all the shopping and dining on Park Avenue, etc. with WDW nearby as an incredible added "bonus"/perk (I would probably still get there once a month). This is currently the plan we are working towards- with lots of work still to go (lol!).;)
 
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5thGenTexan

Well-Known Member
No. I don't think I could stand the constant throng of people. I grew up hearing the rumors of Disney building another park near Dallas (before the internet) and always thought it would be a constant headache to just get around. Same thoughts creep up every time Dallas tries for an Olympics.

WDW is a nice place to visit, but too busy to live in (at).

I worried about "throng of people" as technically it is redundant, but went with it anyway as it appears it is acceptable regardless of the redundancy.
 

A W Reezy

Well-Known Member
I've often thought that it could get dull, but I don't think it would in my particular case. I'm pretty sure that I'd be able to live in Disney and not get bored with it.
 

TXDisney

Well-Known Member
Only other problem with living so close would be if you went too much it would take away from the magic. That's why I think a trip or 2 a year is perfect. Especially if you go during different seasons, so it always looks different. I have a bunch if family that live in Florida and they are annual OAS holders. They really only go when we go down there or other family goes down there. The go day hre day there throughout the year. But generally probably go for less than 10 days a year.
 

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