ASSIGNMENT:
Utopian Society ESSAY PROJECT: Is it possible to have a utopian society? After reading about Rugby, Tennessee, and Walt Disney’s vision for EPCOT, you will write an essay answering the question: Is it possible to have a utopian society? (200-250 words)
THE PROCESS:
•
Read the article: “Rugby, Tennessee: History of Village”
•HIGHLIGHT any evidence that reminds you of a utopian/ideal society.
•Complete the chart.
•Write a background sentence for this text for your introductory paragraph.
•Read the article “E.P.C.O.T” and watch the “Epcot” video (start time: 7:30)
https://sites.google.com/site/theoriginalepcot/film-transcript
•Look for and listen for evidence that reminds you of a utopian/ideal society. HIGHLIGHT any evidence that reminds you of a utopian/ideal society.
•Complete chart.
•Write a background sentence for this text for your introductory paragraph.
Below is the link for the video. It also has several links attached to it that further explains EPCOT's ideas and results/outcomes.
https://sites.google.com/site/theoriginalepcot/film-transcript
Legacy
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966. Even when he was dying from lung cancer, his brother, Roy O. Disney, stated that Walt was still planning his city in the hospital. Walt used the ceiling grid to lay out a scale plot plan in his imagination, each 24" x 24" tile representing one square mile. Florida Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr. signed Chapter 67-764 into law on May 12, 1967, establishing the Reedy Creek Improvement District. However, Disney directors eventually decided that it was too risky to venture into city planning now that its biggest advocate was gone. But Roy persisted and took the reins on the project, stepping out of retirement to do it. However, Roy could not convince the board to build EPCOT. But, he did forge ahead with the Magic Kingdom project. The Walt Disney World Resort opened in October 1971 with only the Magic Kingdom and two hotels. Roy insisted it be called Walt Disney World as a tribute to the man who had dreamed it up.
Even though the city was never built, the Resort represents some of the forward-thinking planning that embodied Walt's idea of EPCOT. Because of the formation of the RCID, Disney could find innovative solutions to the problems of transportation, building construction, supplying electrical power, and waste disposal. Imagineers, including Disney Legends John Hench and Richard Irvine, devised ingenious means of waste disposal and sewer transport. The monorail, while mainly an attraction at Disneyland, was utilized as an actual transportation system, taking guests some thirteen miles around the Resort area.
In the late 1970s, Disney CEO Card Walker wanted to revisit the EPCOT idea. But the board was still wary and all agreed that Walt's EPCOT would not work in its initial incarnation; they thought that no one would want to live under a microscope and be watched constantly.[4] The result of the compromise was the EPCOT Center theme park (now Epcot), which opened in 1982. While still emulating Walt Disney's ideas, it was not a city, but rather closer to that of a World's Fair. Epcot, somewhat true to Walt Disney's vision, revolves around technology and the future in the Future World area. The World Showcase is an embellished version of the downtown shopping area, albeit without the enclosure.
In the early 1990s, the Walt Disney Company built an actual community on the Florida property called Celebration. It is a planned community that employs some of the ideas that Walt Disney envisioned, but on a significantly smaller scale. Unlike EPCOT, which was based on modernism and futurism, there is no radial design for Celebration. Celebration is designed based on new urbanism, and resembles a small American town, but has all the modern conveniences, without the revolutionary transportation ideas contained in the plans for EPCOT.
Singapore is often cited as a real-life EPCOT country. William Gibson described Singapore as Disneyland with the death penalty in an article for Wired in 1993, due to its high degree of city planning and clean and orderly lifestyle, just as Walt Disney would have wanted his community to be.
RUGBY, TENNESSEE: HISTORY OF VILLAGE
http://www.historicrugby.org/
Nestled among tall pines and oaks just south of the Big South Fork National Park, lies Historic Rugby, Tennessee; a British-founded village whose Utopian dream of a better life in America has never quite died. This is the story of the Rugby Colony- an aspiring Utopia.
British author and social reformer Thomas Hughes, famous for his classic novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays, dedicated the Rugby Colony amid great fanfare on October 5, 1880. He envisioned this new community as a place where those who wished could build a strong agricultural community through cooperative enterprise, while maintaining a cultured, Christian lifestyle, free of the rigid class distinctions that prevailed in Britain.
The idea for the colony grew out of Hughes’ concern for the younger sons of landed British families. Under the custom of primogeniture, the eldest son usually inherited everything, leaving the younger sons with only a few socially accepted occupations in England or its empire. In America, Hughes believed, these young men’s energies and talents could be directed toward community building through agriculture. The town site and surrounding lands were chosen in part because the newly built Cincinnati-Southern Railroad had just completed a major line to Chattanooga opening up this part of the Cumberland Plateau.
During the 1880′s, Rugby both flourished and floundered, attracting wide-spread attention on two continents and hundreds of hopeful settlers from both Britain and other parts of America. By 1884, Hughes’ vision seemed close to becoming a thriving reality. An English agriculturalist had been employed to help train new colonists. Some 65-70 graceful Victorian buildings had been constructed on the town site, and over 300 residents enjoyed the rustic yet culturally refined atmosphere of this “New Jerusalem.” Literary societies and drama clubs were established. Lawn tennis grounds were laid out and used frequently. Colonists and visitors enjoyed rugby football, horseback riding, croquet and swimming in the clear flowing rivers surrounding the town site. The grand Tabard Inn, named for the hostelry in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, soon became the social center of the colony. The Thomas Hughes Public Library, with thousands of volumes donated by admirers and publishers, was the pride of the colony. Rugby printed its own weekly newspaper. General stores, stables, sawmills, boarding houses, a drug store, dairy and butcher shop were all in operation. During this heyday period two trains a day ran to Cincinnati, providing a link to goods, services, and entertainment for the Rugby colonists and the town’s many visitors. Press in both America and Europe carried frequent updates on the colony’s progress and problems.
But a typhoid epidemic, which claimed seven lives in 1881, did nothing for the colony’s utopian image or its credit rating. In addition, financial troubles, land title problems and unusually severe winters gradually brought about Rugby’s decline. The Tabard Inn burned in 1884, its replacement meeting the same fate in 1899. Thomas Hughes – whose aged mother Margaret Hughes, his brother Hastings and niece Emily, lived in Rugby during its early years – managed to spend only a month or so each year in the colony. He poured more than $75,000 of his own money into the effort to build the community in the wilderness. But in spite of Rugby’s obvious problems and failures, Hughes never gave up hope for the colony’s future. In a letter to some of the remaining settlers shortly before his death in 1896, Hughes wrote poignantly: “I can’t help feeling and believing that good seed was sown when Rugby was founded and someday the reapers, whoever they may be, will come along with joy bearing heavy sheaves with them.”
By 1900, most of the original colonists had left, many for other parts of America. Though Rugby declined, it was never deserted. Individual residents, some children of original colonists, struggled over many decades to keep its fascinating heritage alive, its surviving buildings and lands cared for and its story told.
Rugby, Tennessee: History of Village
Background /Central IdeaEvidence of Utopian SocietyOutcome/End Result
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Key people:
What is happening?
Explain…
Background sentence for essay:
E.P.C.O.T.
Background /Central IdeaIdeas of Utopian SocietyOutcome/End Result
Time:
Place:
Key people:
What is happening?:
Explain…
Background sentence for essay:
