Walt Disney's E.P.C.O.T film (1966)

The Original EPCOT
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2014–2024
YouTube
962K views · 13 years ago · other · historical

Walt Disney's 1966 film about E.P.C.O.T., his planned Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It presents a circular, layered city with a dense center, monorails and people movers, designed around pedestrians.

HN returns to it in threads on city building as a utopian plan for a walkable, layered city that Disney never got to build.

“it's maybe the 20th century's greatest missed opportunity”
Urban design & public spaceArchitecture
#epcot#waltdisney#cityplanning#utopia#monorail

7 comments from Hacker News

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@brianclements2015 · in “Walt Disney's original E.P.C.O.T film (1966)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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@dm22014 · in “Let's Build a Traditional City and Make a Profit”
Walt Disney wanted to do it 50 years ago, it might be good to take some lessons learned from his planning. link) ▶ this video link Beautiful renderings: link Also, use thumbnails or a CDN FFS. Other planned city resources: link link link
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@Tempest19812024 · in “Disney's robots use rockets to stick the landing”
Not the same, I know, but Disney+ TV has this series: link And going way back, Epcot plans: ▶ this video
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T
@Tempest19812019 · in “Boom! Google pays $1B for Yahoo Sunnyvale sites it bought from Verizon”
Details about 10 min into this video: ▶ this video
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b
@blotter_paper2019 · in “Should Disney World Have the Right to Build a Nuclear Power Plant?”
And those legal machinations were arranged by a lawyer who used to be a CIA recruiter. I'll add this video of Walt Disney's original plan for the land, in which Disney World is overshadowed by the (u/dys)topian city he called EPCOT (later mangled into the showroom we know today by his brother and investors who were scared of costs and didn't see reliable earning potential in running a city) with a timestamp to when the fun starts: ▶ this video This is the stuff that inspired BioShock and similar settings (I believe I read an interview years ago where one of the designers mentioned it as an influence, but I wouldn't know where to find a link).
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T
@Tempest19812017 · in “An Inconvenient Truth about Smart Cities”
The full EPCOT plans are interesting. A circular city layout, with layers. Density in the center. People taking monorails to work, and WEDway people movers locally. Designed for biking and walking. Cars only used on weekends. Details about 10 min into this video: ▶ this video
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p
@padobson2015 · in “When Disney Got Adult and Trippy”
"Industry pundits predicted that no one would sit still for a cartoon feature. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved otherwise and blazed the trail for the industry." Nobody knew how to make serious money on short animations, animated features, or theme parks before Walt Disney. He did it all though. He also wanted to try out the utopia thing[1], and it's maybe the 20th century's greatest missed opportunity. If you haven't read Walt Disney's World[2], it's my favorite biography on the great man. [1]▶ this video [2]link
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