Customer Reviews

Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New Town

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Earlier this year, i was going to be in Orlando for a conference and wanted to visit Celebration as i have an interest, both personal and professional, in urban design. I read Celebration, U.S.A. before i went. I think that my visit was enriched by having read this book before i went.

I found the book provides an interesting and useful introduction to Celebration and New Urbanism. Frantz and Collins provide an narrative history of the development of Celebration as well as an interesting introduction to New Urbanism, etc. We experience alot from the personal leve. They write very well and the book moves readily along. They describe numerous problems with Celebration as well as how the expectations of many residents shaped their reaction to Celebration. It is a fairly fun book, though a little too upbeat at times.

On the other hand, the depth of analysis isn't there and, given the market that this book is directed at, probably wasn't intended to be there.

As an introduction to Celebration and an alternative approach to urban design, this book is worth it. Just don't expect too much.

Authors Frantz and Collins do an excellent job of treading the delicate line between participant and observer in this in depth, inside, and insightful look at Disney's planned town.

I opened the book expecting a hatchet job (these two are reporters, after all) but discovered a balanced and feeling account of what it's like to take part in a turbulent experiment in creating a "real" EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).

Best of all, Frantz and Collins place Celebration in the context of the rich and fascinating history of planned communities in America.

My guess is this book will prove an eye-opener for Disney devotees and detractors alike.

I live in a master-planned community, so I have some experience with many of the seemingly strange rules and regulations described in the book. I'm also fascinated with new urbanism, so I was very excited when I found out about this book. It's higly readable, but there are some awkward places where the authors repeat each other. More troubling, I never got the sense that they went much beyond the perceptions and needs of their immediate family and neighbors. For two supposedly objective journalists, their particular opinions on the Celebration school spoke more of their own biases than anything else. Did anyone else feel like they were more concerned with their own property values than documenting the year or two in Celebration? For a much deeper and thoughtful account, read the "other" Celebration book by Andrew Ross. By the way, he mentions in his book that he tried to contact these authors, but that their editor told them not to talk to him. Interesting. Knowing that the various authors were in Celebration at about the same time, and having them interview many of the same residents was surreal.

Frantz and Collins provide a somewhat interesting but ultimately jumbled appraisal of Disney's planned community just south of the Walt Disney World resort. Part of the problem rests in the dual authorship of the book. Although the narrator constantly writes in the first person, he/she also speaks of him/herself in the third person, often in the same sentence. The result is somewhat alienating.

Another structural problem lies in the chapter organization. There are a number of charming and highly personal anecdotes spread throughout the book which introduce the audience to the unique denizens of Celebration, but there's little attempt to link the characters established in earlier chapters to those who play an active role in the narrative further down the line. As a result, the reader never gains a rounded, in-depth appreciation of any single person or family within the community, which is a real shame because the human component is the most compelling aspect of the book.

Less compelling are the authors' frequently patronizing attitude toward the middle-class inhabitants of Celebration. In a laughably paternalistic chapter addressing racism, the authors bemoan the fact that Celebration is not ethnically diverse and fear that their children are somehow worse off for lack of exposure to black families. In a similar vein, they criticize the Walt Disney Company for refusing to sell houses below market value or institute rent controls in order to artificially introduce a lower income demographic into the community. This last complaint is quite odd considering that the authors often bemoan the "forced" qualities of the community.

Ultimately, the book is not as critical of Disney as some might imagine (or hope), but some of the criticisms leveled at the company are simply too programmed to take at face value. Readers looking for interesting anecdotes about life in a planned community will find some morsels of intrigue here, but readers looking for a comprehensive book detailing the development, politics and future of Celebration, Florida are advised to look elsewhere.

Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins had all the opportunities when they researched Celebration, U.S.A. They bought a house in the town, sent their kids to school, made friends, joined the social circle, even interviewed a few people here and there. You'd think this would make an exceptional book - well researched, deeply felt, rigorously documented. It doesn't. Instead, their book is disjointed, incomplete, and on every page gives the sensation of writers trying to cover for scanty research.

Several of the town's most important early struggles, like the school and its curriculum, or the poor home construction, are discussed in depth. However, the authors fail to provide context and completion for each issue. They never, for example, note the outcome of the battle that could be described as parents v. school, although the outcome certainly occured while they were residents in town. Nor do they discuss in any real detail the local and regional political climate that had such an effect on the school. This sort of thing turns their book into a series of stories with no beginnings and no endings.

They also completely missed many quieter, but just as crucial, events and movements in the town. They failed, for example, to document the Montessori School at all - not its beginnings, which were precedent-setting in Celebration, not its future, nothing. Frantz and Collins failed, too, to reach citizens of Celebration who *weren't* like themselves. There is little dicussion of the single parents, the renters, the gays, the elderly, or the (admittedly limited) ethnic minorities. These omissions create an incredible bias in their book.

Add to this the poor quality of the writing with its distracting conventions, and you have a worthless, random discourse on a truly gripping, relevant topic - the building of a new town by a corporate giant. Despite the fascinating subject, the book cannot hold the attention of the reader for any length of time. If you want to read a decent and interesting book about Celebration, read Andrew Ross's The Celebration Chronicles instead.

A smart idea! Instead of visiting as reporters for a few weeks, the authors moved themselves and their children to Disney's planned community of Celebration, Florida -- then stayed for a year! Here's a real inside viewpoint of Disney's "perfect small town", brought to life by two people who are smart, literate and have a broader view of the meaning, trends and consequences of planned living. As investigative reporters, they cast a wide net -- interviewing executives and residents; getting the back story; examining other planned communities across America (both recent and past). As residents and parents, they also deliver a more realistic, intimate portrait of scraped knees and bruised egos. The lesson is made clear by good, crisp reporting and insider experience: while people can move their families, their possessions and their lives to a new community, ultimately, one thing never changes -- who they are. A delicious read.

I read this book AFTER visiting Celebration, Florida. I was interested in more background info and details. We walked down the Main St of town and thought "this is nice" but not very practical. Practical is shopping in [local store] and buying groceries in[local store]. The days of the corner grocer and little hardware store on Main St are long gone so I was curious about the opinions of the author and his neighbors. This is a great story - it seems to be unbiased and does provide good background info on the town without making it boring. The author nicely weaves little stories about the town or tales of the neighbors into this "documentary" to keep the story moving. I know this book is not for everybody but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's also a great commentary on planned communities in general although I'm not sure that was what the authors intended.

Unlike some of the earlier reviewers, I didn't think this was anti-Disney or anti-Celebration. After reading it, I almost wanted to move to Celebration myself! (If it had decent transit connections to Orlando it could be paradise). The authors' love for the place showed through, and the only thing that mystified me was why they left.

The authors do discuss the very real problems with Celebration's schools and construction; this part of the book could have benefited from a comparison with traditional suburbs, to show readers that Celebration's problems exist in typical suburban sprawl as well -- as anyone who saw what Hurricane Andrew did to Miami's sprawl houses knows!

Celebration may be the most important experiment in urban living in the last quarter century. Douglas Frantz and Cathy Collins have written exactly the kind of book most of us want to read on the topic -- one that's well-researched and well thought out, but also deeply personal and highly engaging. Their narrative flows along at an unstoppable pace. As you turn from incident to incident, from chapter to chapter, you don't even realize you're learning so much -- about the history of utopias, about arhictecture, about the promise and peril of starting over from scratch. Not until you near the end do you realize you've been privvy to one of the great experiments in the American Dream.

Most of the commentary about this book suggests it is about Disney. It's not. This book is about America, about how we love to build something to new, and about the problems that come when our dreams come up against reality. No matter what community you live in, this book will help make your neighborhood a better place, because it will help you be a better neighbor.

As a longtime Disney fan and Florida resident, I was very interested to hear more about Celebration. The book was good, I had to buy it for research reasons, but I finished the book a little skeptical about Disney, primarily the corporation's means of controlling its employees. The authors' experience was certainly eye-opening, as were the sacrifices people made to live in Celebration (financial and career-wise). What bugged me the most, however, were the authors' criticism of Seaside, the New Urbanist town in Northern Florida. Every chance the authors had to criticize Seaside, a different city with different aims, they pounced upon like a mouse pounces upon a block of cheese. I have lived very close to Seaside for my entire life, and if I had to choose, I'd live in Seaside any day over Celebration--the quality of building is much better, and the people are friendlier.