Celebration: The Story of a Town

By Michael Lassell Disney Editions, 2004, 160 pp., hardcover $50. Those looking for a putdown of Celebration won’t find it in Celebration: The Story of a Town, which is a generally glowing account and assessment of Disney’s famous Florida new urban real estate development. In publishing the book, Disney claims to have sought out an independent author with an objective point of view. Manhattan resident Michael Lassell, a long-time editor at Metropolitan Home and avowed modernist, would seem a good choice. Lassell describes himself as suspicious of and cynical about — although not totally hostile to — the town at first. But repeated stays over two years made him a believer. He even fantasized, in the end, about buying a home there. “Finally, what won me over — in a big way — was the sense of community and enormous energy for good that motivates the population of this town. The people who live in Celebration are better educated and more articulate, I suspect, than any comparable group of adults anywhere.” Lassell has produced a highly readable book that is prodigiously illustrated with high-quality photographs and plans. It tells the full story of the conception of the town, from Walt Disney’s 1960s dream, to 1980s debates over what to do with the land, to the many plans and ideas that finally came together with the 1994 groundbreaking. Some people’s contributions are credited more than others — architect Ray Gindroz is mentioned but once, although many pages of his Celebration Pattern Book are reproduced in high-quality, colored detail. Urban designers will find much of interest here, from the profiles of signature buildings to the plans. This is the first time that I have seen early, unbuilt town plans, for example, or have been able to study a map of the project in the context of the 10,000 acres with which Disney had to work. Lassell also covers the town’s early troubles — the shoddy construction of many of the first houses and the school controversy — in detail and with the perspective of the passing years. He also offers more facts on the town demographics and civic life than have been reported elsewhere. As one who has read just about everything written on the town — good and bad — and visited it four times, I learned quite a bit from Lassell’s book. Who knew, for example, that Celebration has the highest per capita ownership of electric vehicles in the US? (The number of neighborhood electric vehicles — NEVs — on Celebration’s streets surprised me on prior visits there.) I also did not know that Celebration’s residents vote 80% Republican, which should not be too surprising given the town’s location in heavily GOP central Florida. But that should also give pause to those who believe that the New Urbanism appeals largely to liberals or Democrats. Sociologists may be interested in the impressive level of civic activity in this young town, as well as Celebration’s surprising frequency of extended families (Lassell found one family with four generations in various parts of town). part of the trend, not a cause I have quibbles with Lassell’s assessment at times. He credits Celebration with a bit too much influence, for example. I think Celebration was part of a larger trend as opposed to a major cause of that trend. Nevertheless, Lassell is right that Disney CEO Michael Eisner deserves a lot of credit for picking architects — Jaquelin Robertson and Robert A.M. Stern — who designed the town based on sound principles that nevertheless clashed with just about every conventional real estate practice at the time. Eisner could have played it safe and chosen a more conventional suburban plan, as proposed by one of the town’s early planners. That would have been an easier way to make money, Eisner points out, though whether Disney could have made more money with a conventional plan is an open question. The book reports that Celebration has consistently exceeded projections in absorption and sales per square foot, but Lassell fails to provide details on profits (beyond stating that Celebration is profitable). Celebration has received boatloads of negative press, usually on the part of big city reporters who either take cheap shots from afar or who fly in for a few hours to confirm preconceived notions of artificiality. The town has also received a lot of praise. Early on in Celebration’s development, two other books were written by New York area residents who moved there, and both books were mostly positive accounts. But residents had mixed feelings about those books, probably because of an understandable sensitivity to criticism. With Lassell’s report, residents finally have a book that they can proudly display in their living rooms. u