By focusing on new town planning as it operates under the ideological blueprints of New Urbanism, one can discover a plethora of information regarding the stereotypes from which we choose to build. Using Seaside, Florida and the town of Celebration, Florida to a lesser extent, I wish to analyze the desire for such planned towns, the type of people to which it caters, as well the those it excludes, the authenticity of its human community, and the architectural make-up of its physical one.

  When I began my research, I knew I was interested in learning more about Seaside. I had already encountered Seaside, along with other planned communities and New Urbanism, in three of my cities courses: Professor Barbara Lane's "Form of the City (190)," during a student presentation in "Topics in Modern Architecture (377)," and Professor Gary McDonogh's "Techniques of the City (365)." In Professor McDonogh's class, we also met as a class to watch the recent 1997 film, "The Truman Show," which had been filmed in Seaside. Weeks later, we watched an episode of "The Prisoner," a 17-episode television show aired 1967. The premise seemed to work well with the faux appearance of the perfect town, as it contrasted the appearance of an ideal physical community with a less than cohesive inter-personal one.

  My thesis solidified a bit more as I realized how well some of the texts I've read in various courses connected to how we view community. Two which were particularly relevant seemed to be Richard Sennett's discussion of the make-up of community in his "The Uses of Disorder," and Stephen Doheny-Farina's "The Wired Neighborhood," wherein he discusses the move from authentic to the commodity that this image of authenticity has become.

  I also searched through Tripod to find books related to Seaside and Celebration (the latter of which there were none), as well as searching on-line using search engines (which, although that which is found online is not always exclusively accurate, often has information published off-line which is also found on the Web, as well as selected images). There were a fair number of web sites which were quite helpful, ranging from a few on "The Prisoner" and "The Truman Show," to various sites created by visitors to Celebration and even the official Seaside site. Seaside's site, http://www.seasidefl.com, was actually incredibly interesting and helpful, and I would have liked to explore it further (the writing style alone was noteworthy of comment). On the other hand, was very difficult to get any very definite or reliable, much less current information on Celebration, Florida, since it does not have its own web site, nor does there seem to be any official publications from the Disney corporation. Outside of these sources, the research process could be described almost like the continual branching out of a tree: when I found one source, it's bibliography or footnotes often led me to others. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to flesh out nearly as many of them as I would have liked.

  In Kathleen LaFrank's essay (found in "Shaping Communities"), both of her own opinion and in quoting A.C. Wallace's work from the 1950's, seems to empathize somewhat with Sennett's views on the move towards a formation of community. Unfortunately, Sennett believes that individuals too often delude themselves into a false sense of security, assuming more community coherence than actually exists. LaFrank noticed that people form new communities when the actually experiences found in the old no longer fit what they expected to encounter. Sennett would agree, but counsel that one shouldn't expect to have the expectation and the actual experience agree, since the community we laud is only a theoretical one, never fully realized, but in existence only to comfort our psyches.

(S=source related, E=example, C=comment, Q and A question and answers.)

• Quite a few problematic issues then surface in our attempt to realize the "ideal community" in built form.
• Why do we feel the need to create an ideal community? What is wrong with the current towns/communities?
• "They" want a pleasant, "safe" community where they feel comfortable. They don't feel safe anymore.
• What is the ideal community? What is "safe"? What makes them feel comfortable?
• Safe, drug-free, crime-free area where everyone is happy, and everyone knows eachother.
• How does one arrive at the ideal community?
• Live in a place with the "right kind of people," in a community with the "proper" values.
• Q: What are the proper values?
• Q: What are the right sort of people?
• Q: What value system are we putting into place? Where is the basis of this ideal community coming from?
• Q: Why do we have new planned towns (built according to the ideology of new urbanism)? I.e., What are we trying to achieve, attain, obtain, or do?
• Q: Why don't communities feel safe?
  1. S: Talk about LaFrank & Wallace. People want a safe community where they don't feel threatened. When one community doesn't serve the need, because the feeling of safety isn't matching the experiences, a Revitalization Movement begins in which they try to rejuvinate the community, or create another one anew.
  2. S: Sennett-- we're only deluding ourselves anyway: we tell ourselves that we're in a safe community-- "purifying" it, but it's only a manner of emotional self-preservation.
  3. E: Talk about Bryn Mawr: the thought that "It could never happen here."
  4. E: The events in Colorado are the same. We ignore the reality and hope that by ignoring the truth and proclaiming the dream the dream will become reality: we ignore that which we don't like, because it threatens our belief that we live in a perfect world.
• What is the (American) ideal? What do we desire in our perfect community? Who makes up "people" when we discuss people's desire for ideal communities? Who are they catering to? What sort of people live there now? What are we searching for? What sort of physical enviroment is necessary?
  1. There are basic characteristics which most people could easily agree upon: a safe neighborhood, free of drugs, violence, and crime. An environment for goood people searching for a wholesome environment.
  2. A: We're looking to be "American"-- the great American town.
  3. Q: What does it mean to be American?
  4. A: Christian. White. Conservative. Democratic(?).
  5. white picket fences, porches. The South.
  6. S: Sennett talking about wanting the right sort of people-- the white neighborhood running out the blacks, but they weren't as cohesive and "good" as they thought: high divorce rate, etc.
  7. S/E: Look at the Seaside web site. Look at the way things are run, the events that are held, the "things to do," the available recreational activities. They have tennis courts, swimming pools, and a world-class croquet field-- but no basketball courts. They have a christmas tree lighting event. They have a wine-tasting festival. The town has a front desk, and a consierge.
  8. A: Conservative, christian, (upper-)middle class whites.
  9. E: The slide of "Disney Discovers Real Life," showing a white man and his pre-adolescent son. Why is this "real life"-- what's more, why is this real life to the exclusion of other lifestyles, types of people, etc?
• Are people excluded from these communities, and how? Who is excluded? Why do they feel excluded?
  1. S: Seaside book (Making a Town), Andersen says that they haven't been completely exclusive: they aren't a gated community; there is not gatekeper or gate.
  2. A: /Yet/, there is more than one way to exclude others: make them (and their culture or way of life) feel unwanted or uncomfortable, and they will avoid the area. One doesn't need physical boundaries to have the same effect.
  3. C: I have yet to see a minority in a picture from either Seaside or Celebration (not that there are pictures of Celebration).
  4. makes me wonder-- what is the minority population in these areas? In the the counties outside of these planned towns?
  5. Other racial implications. Look at LaFrank, describing the homes (Type IV, Type VI) - they have appropriated the plantation house for their own use. LaFrank says that in the process of importation and revitalization, homeowners can enjoy the positive connotations of the plantation house without any of the negative historical references. Unfortunately, this seems much more easily said than done. It would be easy for many whites to feel at ease with the feeling of security and distinguishment the plantation connotes; they were the ones in power. But it seems highly unlikely that a black family would be able to seperate the "good" historical references from the bad, especially since the bad dealt with the enslavement of their race.
• Going into the past to find our future
  1. We glorify things that never existed.
  2. Revising history.
  3. historic preservation: making the old "new."
  4. It's interesting to note how we use the concept of a town from ages past, a sort of Everytown, USA drawn mainly from the 1940s and 1950s, to form the perfect living environment for our present (and future).
  5. Seaside was supposed to be like a post-World War II town.
  6. The Walt Disney corporation built Celebration, FL in 1996. The image of our idyllic community is perfectly caricatured (sp?) in Celebration's logo, something akin to a wood carving or stamp with the image of a pony-tailed girl on a bike, her little puppy-dog following behind. We are presented with an icon which confirms the traditional, conservative, and safe neighborhood image the seeker might find in Celebration.
• How do we create and foster this community from an architectural standpoint/slant?
  1. A: (Making a Town book/photocopies.) Building codes. The urban code, the street prototypes, the architectural code.
  2. lack of focal points
  3. i.e., the grand avenues don't really lead anywhere
  4. if anything, one's eye is drawn to the periphery
  5. immaculately kept/mown lawns,
  6. small or non-existent front yards
  7. homes built close to the street
  8. cars around back, out of sight
  9. back alleyways
  10. houses conform to the same standards, follow a set of rules.
  11. connecting nothing to nothing
  12. Very walkable town-- don't need cars to get around.
  13. front porches (mentioned elsewhere) even though it didn't work.
  14. plantation-style houses, historic references in architecture
• Does it work?
  1. S: It's become a vacation resort, (LaFrank?), not a real town.
  2. S/E: Ties in with the "front porch" problem LaFrank talks about. The front porch, in addition to any inherent symbolism, is supposed to make the street a more public place, helping to foster community. Unfortunately, the summers are horribly hot in Seaside, so the porches remain unused. The concept is there, but the implementation is lacking.
  3. C: one might question how sustainable this new sort of "virtual reality" is.
• The front vs. underlying reality.
  1. "fake" communities
  2. A: People are operating under the illusion of community, not the reality.
  3. S/E: The Wired Neighborhood: "Virtual Vermont": we lose the real authentic when it is eventually taken over by our portrayal of the authentic, which then becomes the only reality we know. Replacing Vermont with the image of Vermont. (Doheny-Farina, 43-47)
  4. physical layout of the town: towns are normally built up around some common point. these aren't, and it's representative of their underlying fragility-- they don't have any real worth. They have been built on stereotypes, on ideals and ideology, rather than a true sense of belonging.
  5. C: The difference between the human and physical community. In this new urbanism, we make a place and then put people into it, but one needs both types of community, physical and human, for it to be successful.
  6. S: (LaFrank) her description supports that: the wealthiest people have the best opportunity to remove themselves from their surroundings.
  7. S: (Sennett) running away from the world
  8. Celebration-- we make the "authentic" into a commodity.
  9. The way disneyworld works, we don't see the negative things. They have underground tunnels for some workers, the trash, etc: in Seaside, we see the positive, and laud the ideals of a cohesive community, but it only looks like a community: do they have that much in common with eachother?
• C: Totalitarian vs. (democratic? utopian?) paradise
  1. It may seem wonderful, but there is a fine line; we give up freedom for what we consider to be perfection.
  2. Look at the Truman Show: If the town was so ideal, why did Truman leave? Why risk perfection for uncertainty? Because "perfection" was forced; regulated and homogeneous. His life was a snapshot of the fifties, a moment in time beyond which nothing advances.
  3. is it real? what is real? is it fake? what does it mean when we permit ourselves to restrict our own freedom for what we consider to be 'better'? lose freedom, preserve safety. Big Brother. (1984)
• C: "The Prisoner" Television Show
  1. The 1967 television show, "The Prisoner," dealt with a secret agent who resigned, was abducted and woke up in an idyllic town. It had everything he could possibly want; yet if he or anyone else ever tried to leave, they would be captured and returned by a large white bubble. This shallow image of perfection, as seen on the surface in the town, seems to fit rather well with the impression of community found in Seaside. It seems like a front behind which real life must somewhere be hiding.
• In its description of Seaside's goals, the town's official web site put proposes claims of diversity in population and architecture: but this is obviously lacking. The population is anything but diverse, and the architecture, while not completely homogeneous, is only permitted some deviation within the building code's restrictions.
• Seaside, Florida and Celebration, FL are often lauded as perfect communities, as much as can be realized. But exactly of what have they been made, and why are they such ideal towns, if even idyllic at all?

• p46: "But give the place a break: Seaside strives to avoide pernicious elitism. There is not grand gate or guardhouse, no security fence. The required vernacular forms and materials mean that ostentation is almost impossible."
• "..and because [Seaside] is in concept and style conservative-- radically conservative--"
• "What are Seaside's politics? The codes reinforce individual privacy (picture windows and sliding glass doors are prohibited) except when it diminishes the sense of community (houses must be close to the street and each other). It is conservative, and it is democratic; it is elitist, and it is populist; it is American."

EASTERLING

• architectural code, town of seaside: pg 260-263.
• map of seaside (one page) -- p97
• urban code, town of seaside --p99
• street prototypes --p104
• 2pg map of seaside

LAFRANK

• Anthony F.C. Wallace-- revitalization movements
• What are the defining ideals of the community? of American society? for it is these we are trying to regain with towns like Seaside.
• A new town, the old ways. (theme)
• "The forward thing is to look backwards."
• is the town really so fake? they surveyed many towns and cities and drew on the most successful aspects, putting these elements into seaside.
• they are building social inequality into the town-- is that a good or a bad thing? the most affluent are given one section, the less affluent another.
• "...when cultural systems become inconsistent, marked by repeated contradictions between cultural images and actual experiences, then cultural activities and objects lose their effectiveness in providing stability and comfort." [LaFrank, 112]
• "..our once-progressive images of urbanism has been corroded... In this context, Seaside can be seen as an attempt to relieve... society by reconciling the image of home with the experience of home and community and restoring the protective power of place. " [LaFrank, 112]

SENNETT

• members of wealthy/affluent communities can afford to withdraw from eachother.
• by sharing and encountering eachother less often, they have fewer opportunities to get to know eachother.
• don't know eachother, assume things about (community cohesiveness and about) eachother.
• purifying the community-- false sense of an ideal/pure community
• get indignant at any accusation of imperfection, because it's a threat to what they base their identity on.

THE PRISONER TV SHOW

• the perfect town, sure -- but only if you conform.

WWW.SEASIDEFL.COM

• They have a front desk and concierge. Yes, it's for summer rentals too, but that makes it seem even that much more fake. -- "What to Do in Seaside."http://www.seasidefl.com/todo.htm.
• They suggest that you go to the beach, consider golfing, or going to the swim and tennis club. Very elitist..(?) Not everyone wants to do this sort of thing.
• "As a guest in Seaside you can enjoy all that the Seaside Swim & Tennis Club has to offer, including: three swimming pools, bike rentals, sensational tennis courts, a world-class croquet lawn (where else around here are you going to find one of these?), and a funky playground for kids."
• notice there don't seem to be mentions of basketball courts, baseball diamonds...the wrong sorts of people use these...? -- "What to Do in Seaside."http://www.seasidefl.com/todo.htm.
• The activities seem to be very upperclass-oriented arts-and-crafts or sophisticated ones. Orgami, Collage, Terracotta pot painting, paper making, adult nature stamps, Spring Wine Festival. Not very physically active activities things. Tentative microbrew festival, christmas tree lighting (ah! christian-based stereotype!!), /Safe/ Trick-or-treating. ugh. -- "What's Up in Seaside."http://www.seasidefl.com/whatsup.htm.
• "Welcome to Seaside. The Little Beach Town That Changed the World... By Remembering How Nice the World Can Be." --www.seasidefl.com
• "Is Seaside just some cutesy gimmick? Well, let's put it this way, Disney came HERE for inspiration, but that was long after the world's design, planning and architectural communities marveled at the very notion of Seaside." --www.seasidefl.com

WWW.XONE.NET/CELEBRATION

  Simply, ask yourself this: Would you be willing to pay extra if you could be assured your neighbor always had his lawn mowed, that his house paint never chipped, that he never had a car up on cement blocks in his drive way? Now ask yourself this: Would you be willing to pay extra if you were constantly told what was wrong with your house and what you had to do to fix it, that you have to mow your lawn and remove your broken down car from the front driveway? It is a paradox that residents of Celebration must live in. Live by the rules, and you are living in paradise. Break the rules, and you are living in a totalitarian state. -- http://www.xone.net/celebration/

Andersen, Kurt. "Is Seaside Too Good To Be True?" Seaside: Making a Town in America. Edited by David Mohney and Keller Easterling. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991.

Cottrell, Kenny. "Celebration FAQ." Celebration Information. http://www.tudlp.org/celeb.html.

"Disney's Celebration: Small-town Americana on the edge of the twenty-first century." http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/celebration.html. Andy Wood, 199_.

Doheny-Farina, Stephen. The Wired Neighborhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Greer, Nora Richter. "Cause for Celebration?" http://www.e-architect.com/pia/rudc/causclbr.asp. May 1998. Web Site of the American Institute of Architects, http://www.e-architect.com/home2.html.

"Guide to Disney's Town of Celebration, USA." http://www.xone.net/celebration/. The Xone Network, 1997-1999.

LaFrank, Kathleen. "Seaside, Florida: "The New Town-- The Old Ways." Shaping Communities. Carter L. Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, Editors. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1997.

Oliande, Sylvia. "A Visit to Celebration." http://www.primenet.com/~dbrady/oliande/celebration.html. 1997.

"The Prisoner." Patrick McGoohan, Producer & Creator. Television Show. 1967.

"Seaside, Florida." http://www.seasidefl.com. Seaside Community Development Corp., 1999.

Seaside: Making a Town in America. Edited by David Mohney and Keller Easterling. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural Press, 1991.

Sennett, Richard. The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970.

Singleton, E. Crichton. "Celebration: Disney's Experiment in New Urbanism." http://www.e-architect.com/pia/rudc/celebra.asp. May 1998. Web Site of the American Institute of Architects, http://www.e-architect.com/.

"The Truman Show." Peter Weir, Director. Paramount Pictures, 1998.

Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. Edited by Michael Sorkin. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1992.