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The
Celebration Controversies
(2004)
Andrés Duany
Celebration is perhaps the most
prominent and certainly the most
controversial of the second-generation New
Urbanist communities. Along with Harbor
Town, Kentlands, Haile Plantation, Southern
Village, Newpoint and Laguna West,
Celebration followed Seaside by
approximately eight years. They collectively
offer corrections to the problems and
deficiencies of Seaside and a furtherance of
its promise.
Controversies have
swirled around Celebration since its
inception, eliciting two full-length books
(“The Celebration Chronicles” by Andrew Ross
and “Celebration, U.S.A.” by Douglas Frantz
and Catherine Collins) as well as countless
articles. This discussion intends to clarify
the principal issues, separating the
intentions and actualities of the plan from
the popular sport of shadowboxing the
developer who promoted it — the Disney
Corporation.
Celebration had a very
long gestation, indeed a prehistory. Its
genesis was in the late 1960s when the
Disney Corporation purchased some 27,000
acres in central Florida nearby the
then-quiet city of Orlando. Following the
success of Disneyland in Anaheim, Walt
Disney began conceiving a second-generation
theme park in Florida. It may be remembered
that the design establishment of the time
(less cynical than today’s) had admired
Disneyland. In the influential essay by
Charles Moore, “You Have To Pay For The
Public Life” (Perspecta 10 – Yale
Architectural Journal), Disneyland was
proposed as a surrogate public realm. The
planning profession (at its technocratic
peak, before Jane Jacobs) heartily approved
of the crowd handling, the transportation
interfaces, and the amazing monorail.
Disneyland was hailed for its potential to
influence actual communities. This praise
must have affected Walt Disney for he
envisioned the Florida project to include a
habitable new town to be called EPCOT
(Experimental Prototype Community Of
Tomorrow).
EPCOT was to embody the
most advanced planning techniques; indeed,
it was the kind of futurist vision possible
to contemplate only in the heyday of the
space program (Cape Canaveral is about one
hour from Orlando). It was a remarkable
project, not least because it could have
been built. The design was completed to the
extent that plans, renderings and a model
were prepared and, with Walt Disney serving
as narrator, a documentary film was
produced.1
Disney’s unexpected death
in 1966 halted the process, and the
generation of administrators that followed
him, either lacking the vision or perhaps
having the good sense not to attempt an
urban experiment at such a scale, shelved
everything but the name. EPCOT was
eventually built as another theme park, or
more precisely, a turn-of-the-century-style
world’s fair of the sort where different
countries are represented by surrogate
pieces of their architecture, food,
artifacts, and inhabitants in native costume
for the delight and instruction of the
visitors. EPCOT does this rather well, but
it is not a community intended for
habitation, let alone a demonstration of
visionary urbanism.
The idea died for
a couple of decades until the advent of yet
another generation of management — the
present one under Disney Corporation CEO
Michael Eisner. Eisner assembled a staff
that was, arguably, the equal to Walt Disney
in vision. He set about to fulfilling the
potential of the company, including the
revival of the idea of building a model
city.
Eisner’s first step was to
restore to America the role of architectural
patron.2 This involved the retention of
first-rate architects for various Disney
office buildings, hotels and even some park
structures. Under the new entity of Disney
Development Company and president Peter
Rummell, Wing Chao and others served as
architectural advisors. Graves, Venturi,
Stern, Gwathmey, Gehry, Isosaki and other
such illustrissimos, designed buildings. The
critical success of this venture probably
emboldened Eisner to the resuscitation of
the new town idea, but one that could hardly
be more different from the original EPCOT.
Some say Celebration would not have been
undertaken were it not for the need to
maximize the value of Disney’s enormous land
holdings. After every conceivable idea for
theme parks, hotels and office parks had
been allocated, there was still substantial
territory left over. Another, more intricate
story involves a geopolitical scenario where
two additional interchanges on I-4 would
open up this sector of the Disney holdings
for development but only if a project as
appealing as Celebration was to be
proposed.3 Both of these are plausible
scenarios. The latter, if true, was a
brilliant strategic move, as two exits were
duly granted — one for a new entry, in
addition to a major new toll way connected
directly to the airport (The Greenway). This
sort of move is no less than a responsible
development company would make in the vast
game that is the urbanization process in the
Sunbelt. There is nothing dishonorable about
it.
Even beyond the prehistory and
the elaborate permitting maneuvers, the
incubation of Celebration was unusually
protracted, taking over eight years. This
was due to the careful consideration of
every aspect, and perhaps also to excessive
caution with the marriage between the
then-impeccable Disney reputation with the
tainted trade of Florida development.
The design process was not only long it
was also elaborate. To create Celebration, a
new design team was assembled. Peter Rummell
had been brought in to head Disney
Development from a career with Arvida, the
most prestigious of Florida’s real estate
development companies. He was seconded
throughout by Tom Lewis, formerly head of
Florida’s Department of Community Affairs
and an architect with a record of public
service. They began by holding an invited
competition to choose the firm who would
design this prestigious Disney project.
Invited were Robert A. M. Stern &
Associates, Gwathmey/Siegel, Duany
Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) and Edward D.
Stone, Jr. What DPZ would do was assumed but
to the evident surprise of the Disney
Development team, all but one competitor (Ed
Stone’s was a conventional resort) also
designed neo-traditional plans. After a
men’s room conversation, the three
sympathetic architects (Duany, Stern and
Siegel) contrived a proposal for jointly
preparing a plan. In the meantime, Lewis and
Rummel had arrived at the idea of pursuing a
“consensus plan.” A charrette duly took
place in the Gwathmey/Siegel office not long
afterwards. “Seaside” book co-author Keller
Easterling (at that time a Stern employee)
played a prominent part in the design. The
resulting plan was a continuously curved
grid, both simple and elegant, which, as it
turned out, did not take the wetlands
sufficiently into account. Ultimately, this
and other realities of the site would cause
the plan to be modified to the present one.4
At this point, the project became
submerged in the permitting process (by all
accounts well handled by Tom Lewis with
attorney Bob Rhodes in charge of
environmental issues). When it emerged for
detail design years later, the team stood
as: Robert A.M. Stern with Paul Whalen as
project manager; Jaquelyn Robertson with
Brian Shea as project manager; and EDAW, the
firm charged with the landscape plan. (The
town center was a separate competition with
Stern, Robertson and Gwathmey/Siegel
invited. The Stern plan won and it was
refined in conjunction with Robertson.) It
is this team, with the addition of Ray
Gindroz of UDA, who contrived the urban and
architectural controls, that was responsible
for the final design. Despite gracious
acknowledgement by Tom Lewis, DPZ did not
participate, except indirectly through the
influence of Seaside and whatever ideas from
the original consensus plan happened to be
incorporated along the way.5
This
team’s master plan, currently being built
out as planned, finally broke ground in
1994. Like all New Urbanist towns,
Celebration includes a wide range of
mixed-use and residential building types, a
network of walkable streets, and at least
one town center. Development entitlements
include 8,065 residential units; 3,100,000
square feet of workplace; and 2,125,000
square feet of retail, including the main
street shops. The question of whether
Celebration is a New Urbanist town is no
longer under debate since it fulfills as
complete a checklist of the Charter’s
principles as can be found in any New
Urbanist project. Controversies, though,
have emanated from sources other than the
purist New Urbanists: the entrenched
development industry, for one, perhaps
fearing that Celebration’s success would
change the rules of the game; and for
another the avant-garde academic
establishment, absolutely terrified that
such a conservative design could actually
result in a respectable, socially
responsible community. From these sources,
skepticism continues to be produced despite
“the facts on the ground.”
The facts
are that Celebration is one of the most
intricate and accomplished examples of urban
development since the 1930s. The diversity
of housing in close proximity at Celebration
breaks new ground as it includes rental
apartments and rowhouses, all seamlessly
integrated with single-family houses and
quite expensive mansions. This ideal is a
risky marketing proposition for developers.
Few New Urbanist towns do as well, while
conventional suburban development does not
even acknowledge the possibility. The large,
mixed-use town center also includes
apartments above stores, a school, a branch
college campus (Stetson University) and a
hotel, as well as useful retail and
restaurants (not one a national chain), a
bank, a church and plenty of office space.
It includes a cinema attached to a
late-night bar and an ice cream store. The
town center is associated with a lake along
a public waterfront drive.6 The lake is part
of a simple and elegant drainage system
along a central canal that is both a
beautiful civic element and environmentally
responsible. There is a golf course
accessible to the public and shared visually
by all as it is fronted by a public drive
rather than privatized by backyards.
But Celebration is certainly not flawless.
In terms of the housing, there were two
errors made: one relates to the marketing,
the other to affordability. As to the first,
there are not enough townhouses to meet
demand. This is a common mistake among the
New Urbanist greenfield towns. Since there
is no precedent for higher-density housing
types located so distant from the center,
conventional rear-view market analysis
yields no conclusion other than that they
will not sell. But such methods do not take
into account that while townhouses are
meaningless without a town, they are a very
desirable residential type when there is
one. A stick of townhouses amidst suburban
berms has the double disadvantage of lacking
the big yard in the back without the
compensation of a lively street in the
front. But Celebration is a town, of course,
and thus the 200 or so original townhouses
that were reluctantly provided sold out
immediately, and there are no more to be had
in the town center. More are now being built
in the outlying areas where they make as
little sense as in a conventional suburban
development. It is difficult to retrofit to
a higher density so it is always advisable
in such cases of skepticism to provide the
paper density and to reduce it subsequently
if there is indeed a failure of demand.
The second error in the housing
provision is social and also one of public
relations. It involves a Florida law
requiring a ratio of affordable housing to
be included in projects of a certain size.
In most cases developers, as is their right,
opt to make payments to the agency in lieu
of providing their actual construction. This
practice is supported by the agency because
it allows all their housing to be clustered,
facilitating its administration. By New
Urbanist standards this is irresponsible as
it segregates the society. In the case of
Celebration, this was certainly an
opportunity lost. This, in fact, would have
responded to much of the criticism regarding
affordability that, as with all New Urbanist
communities, is lost due to scarcity
regardless of its original selling price.
Besides, it is now difficult for Celebration
to accommodate the schoolteachers,
babysitters and service industry workers
that a modern 24/7 society requires. In
fairness to Disney, Celebration is being
built in Osceola County where there is an
abundance of affordable housing. The elected
officials of the county made it very clear
to Disney that they wanted no lower cost
(under $125,000) housing in Celebration.
Beyond these criticisms, the plan itself
makes several important improvements to the
Seaside model. True alleys were provided to
accommodate the parking (in Seaside, the few
planned alleys have been gentrified), and
the privacy of the backyards was carefully
secured by “backbuildings” (such outdoor
privacy is neglected at Seaside). Also, a
set of controls discourages the purchase of
houses by individuals who would use them
primarily as vacation houses, which can
undermine the reality of community (this is
an obvious problem at Seaside). This is
another learned point from Seaside where
many buildings became spectacular
investments rather than homesteads. In
Celebration, a house sold within one year of
its completion requires that the profits
above the C.P.I. to revert to the
Celebration Foundation. Thus Celebration has
become a proper full-time community rather
than a resort. This achievement should be
applauded by those critics who demand such
statistical ideals from New Urbanist
communities.7 In addition, this constraint
(which lowers the desirability and
consequently the value of the real estate)
is not a policy that the usual for-profit
developer would undertake. In this regard,
Celebration is a reflection of the idealist
economic model of Ebenezer Howard, so seldom
implemented.
A trivial controversy
was made prominent by a New York Times
article and must, therefore, be addressed
here. Its details are vaguely remembered, so
only a generalized taint remains regarding
an oppressive Disney paternalism. But the
healthy investigative instinct of the
journalist does not mean that the reporting
was anything but ideologically driven. There
was a protest led by some Celebration
parents against the curriculum of the town’s
public school. Their dissatisfaction was
presented by the Times as a civic failure of
the community, but it is actually the
symptom of something else. That residents
coalesce around a gripe is a manifestation
of healthy community life (see Baumgartner,
“The Moral Order of the Suburb”) and the
outcome is revealing of the actual balance
of power. Celebration’s residents were more
conservative than the developers and did not
appreciate the Celebration School’s
innovative curriculum, one that had been
designed primarily by the Harvard School of
Education. The residents ultimately
succeeded in altering the course at the
public school against Disney. This
demonstrates that the terms of the
association documents are not entirely
loaded to the advantage of the developer as
they routinely are with the several hundred
thousand other such homeowner’s associations
currently in place across the United States,
those that seem to have slipped beneath the
horizon of our intelligentsia distracted as
they are with more important issues of free
artistic expression.
An interesting
and valid set of questions regards the
retail component. This one is debated
principally within the development industry.
It concerns a main street that was fully
built-out very early in the project,
providing the commerce to serve the
community before the population was there to
support it. Several of these shops have
failed. This has caused some to question the
decision of building retail at all or, more
cogently, to question its location for the
main street is placed at the center of the
community and away from the traffic flow of
the highway that passes by its edge. Because
of Disney’s wealth, some assume the
surviving shops must be heavily subsidized.
This is not so, as shown by the fact that a
few of the most sentimentally compelling
have gone out of business (a bakery, a
bookstore and a bicycle shop). Indeed, the
shops are centrally managed; the merchants
are recruited proactively as is the case
with any modern shopping center. The
subsidies are no more than incubator tenants
receive in a conventional shopping mall as
the management helps them get a start in
business. These “subsidies” are about to end
at Celebration, as is standard practice. In
any case, the main street in a New Urbanist
community should not necessarily be
considered a profit center; it plays the
role of the principal amenity. It is the
marketing equivalent (and equivalent line
item on the budget) of the clubhouse and
guarded entry of the conventional suburban
housing pod, from which no developer expects
to make a direct profit.
Be that as
it may, the main street in Celebration was
placed at the centroid of the community,
where it does not have access to the
economic energy of the regional traffic but
where it provides “walk to town” convenience
to a significant number of residents,
especially children. The criticism that the
shops should not have been located
internally is valid in economic principle;
along the highway they would certainly have
been successful from the very beginning.
However, had the shops been so located, the
regional traffic may have overwhelmed the
smallish main street and undermined its role
as social condenser of the community.8 The
result could have been that of Seaside,
where the town square has become a regional
destination. Great numbers of outsiders do
support the relatively cosmopolitan mix of
merchants at Seaside, but they overwhelm the
residents and dilute the sense of community.
Besides, a close study of the plan shows
that there was really no other choice. The
highway, where the town center could have
been, is cut off from the community by a
second, limited-access expressway. As it is,
this awkward residual area between the two
regional thoroughfares is where the
employment area is planned. Four office
buildings by Aldo Rossi and a hospital by
Stern are complete, and others that will
provide the balanced employment are
currently planned for construction. It does
continue to be a problem that these
workplaces, cut off by the tollway, will not
be within walking distance of “lunch” on the
main street; but there is no better solution
available than the one that was implemented.
Celebration’s is what we call an “unlucky
site,” in this respect.
The tenuous
economic situation of the main street is
another manifestation of the citizen’s
relative power. Disney could assure the
success of the shops by introducing the main
street to the infonet that distributes the
millions of tourists to its various venues.
Celebration could easily have become part of
the visitor’s itinerary. While the merchants
sought it, the residents did not wish it,
and the Disney Corporation complied against
its own best financial interests.
Beyond these controversies, there are
lessons to be learned from Celebration’s
corporate management. For example, the main
street maintains four restaurants at
different price points. The most expensive
is a “white tablecloth and wine” operation
suited for special occasions, while the most
economical one will feed a family nicely
without undue hardship. This is not the
usual situation. Following the dictates of
highest and best use, most Florida
waterfronts have restaurants that have
either become simultaneously expensive or
been reduced to providing cheap tourist
food. Corporate management can maintain
variety when appropriate assuring that
ordinary and useful things remain available.
The alternate is the antiques or
t-shirt-and-tourist-trinket-emporia typical
of most historic main streets. Mom and pop
stores may succeed economically, but they do
not usually serve the ordinary needs of the
surrounding residents. Celebration maintains
its traditional main street of useful,
ordinary retail with modern shopping
center-style management. This, it seems, is
the future.
Celebration is
controversial in other ways related to
management. One has to do with its political
implications; the second has to do with its
physical results.
Management, such as
there is in Celebration, is usually tagged
by critics as “private government. ” This
critical term cleverly implies secession
from the travails of American democracy.
This is not so. The property owner’s
associations9 of Celebration are actually an
additional layer of government willingly
engaged by the residents. It does not
preclude the usual overlay of county, state
and federal government. In fact, the
Celebration associations are not unlike
200,000 other property owners’ associations
common to the post-war suburbs.10
Associations are municipal governments by
contract. At the time of purchase, future
residents agree to abide by a stated set of
rights and responsibilities. Is this more
restrictive than moving into a city subject
to a municipal code one has not been
reminded to examine? And what of the
unquestioned commonplace of being born into
a government? How fair is that? One day, as
is the case with virtually all such
developments since the 1920s, I expect that
Celebration will be incorporated as a
municipality, with the association as its
basis.
What exacerbates the
Celebration governance controversy is that,
in this case, the current controlling entity
is an enormously powerful corporation. I
experimented with this relationship three
years ago by purchasing a lot in Celebration
and designing a house to be built on it.
Coincidentally, I went through a similar
process for a house in my hometown, the city
of Coral Gables, Fla. I found my experience
at Celebration to be superior to that
provided by the presumably excellent
municipal government of upper-class Coral
Gables. The details are beyond the scope of
this paper, but the experiences opened me to
the possibility that American municipal
government is often less responsive to its
citizens than an American corporation to its
customers. The competence and alacrity so
often lacking in the public sector is
commonplace in private enterprise. And
besides, the correction of mismanagement by
corporation with a contractual relationship
to a customer can be readily engaged by
arbitration or threat of lawsuit. A
municipality is usually unresponsive to
remedies other than concerted political
action — a rather labor-intensive,
long-range and iffy proposition, not worth
engaging to correct the minor humiliations
that Americans have learned to endure from
their municipal governments.
In the
end, Celebration must be assessed the way
all urbanism should be assessed — not by
photos and short visits (which suffice for
architectural criticism), but by inhabiting
a place for a period of time.1 1 Does the
community improve how the day is lived? Does
it accommodate the ebb and flow of life?
I spent several days in Celebration
sampling the quality of the morning coffee,
the kind of groceries and newspapers
available at the market, and the “third
place” atmosphere of the eateries. I even
tested the police and maintenance functions
by engaging in mild civic misbehavior, such
as throwing trash on the ground and
vandalizing parts of the urban furnishing.12
I joined seniors and kids gathering, and I
experienced how late at night I could hang
out (martinis were available till midnight
from a satisfyingly flirtatious bar girl
next to the movie house). Celebration tested
well in such ways, and particularly well
when compared to developments of equal age,
which is how urbanism should be evaluated. I
don’t know about New York when it was still
New Amsterdam, but Celebration certainly
outperformed Miami on its sixth birthday.1 3
Time is a tremendously important factor in
urbanism, one that is seldom internalized in
the current assessment of the New Urbanism
movement.14
The other controversy
over controls is architectural. It centers
on The Celebration Pattern Book, conceived
by Ray Gindroz and UDA. This document is of
a different order altogether from the
Seaside code, and indeed from most any other
code ever written or drawn. It has a
precision, clarity and completeness that
should elicit admiration from anyone who
studies it as an intellectual achievement.
But its very comprehensiveness goads
critics. In addition to those arguments from
architects concerned with the infringement
on their prerogative for creativity, one can
legitimately raise the question: Does it
improve the urbanism when its physical
manifestation is so precisely prescribed?
First, to the complaining architects,
one would have to respond: Why is it that
there are no complaints of repression when a
single architect designs all the buildings,
however, when a design is distributed to
scores of architects that would not
otherwise be involved there are problems?
This concern is a knee-jerk reaction and
compels no further attention, but there is
an interesting question regarding a tradeoff
in quality. Many creative possibilities are
precluded by codes, but so is substandard
performance and kitsch. It is a truism that,
by raising the bottom, a code inevitably
lowers the top. A code operates like a sine
curve controlling symmetrically the
oscillation between the brilliant and the
dismal. While no building in Celebration
rises to the level of the best buildings at
Seaside, no building falls to the level of
kitsch. This range can be attributed to
Seaside’s looser code, which allows better
but also worse buildings. Seaside has
buildings by Rossi, Holl, Chatham, Berke,
Machado, Silvetti, Gorlin, Merrill, Mockbee
and Krier, all by code, but it also has
buildings that will improve when blown down
by a hurricane.
A code itself is a
neutral instrument that can be adjusted, but
it cannot eliminate the exceptionally bad
without limiting the exceptionally good. The
application of The Celebration Pattern Book
has led to a general run of architecture
that is uniformly good, but not more. This
potential problem has been mitigated in
Celebration by the two-dozen commercial and
civic buildings at the town center that are
not coded – at least not in the usual sense.
For these, the old stable of Disney star
architects were invited and given the
“theme” of the small southern town. They
worked together in cycles of mutual critique
to achieve the necessary compatibility that
a code normally assures and that urbanism
requires. Thus, Celebration presents two
patterns of coding. The Pattern Book, which
prescribes at a level corresponding to the
builder’s manuals of the 19th century, and
the organic method, common in the 1920s of
regionalist collegiality (which was later
undermined by the manic individualism
induced by modernism).
Some who
object to the Pattern Book are correct in
assessing that one would not need an
architect at all, and it is a waste to
engage one. This may be so, but it remains
an important instrument for those instances,
all too common in the American building
industry, when an architect is not involved.
In the meantime, we can look forward to a
new section, in use but not yet printed,
which creates modernist patterns for the
forthcoming office buildings. This will be
added to the six traditional styles already
included in the Pattern Book.
Another
controversy (one of no permanent interest)
regards the quality of the construction.
Some early residents complained about what
they perceived to be shoddiness. This is
understandable but unfair. The quality at
Celebration was similar to that of the
corresponding price points in competing
developments. The dissatisfaction stemmed
from expectations projected on a Disney
product. Disney is perceived to be the
creator of perfect environments, and those
that purchased did not take into account the
realities of the Florida context. In any
case, the corrections were duly made, and
housing at Celebration currently exceeds the
norm in both workmanship and quality of
design.
After that difficult initial
period, the national builders have learned
how to build traditional houses correctly,
and they have also learned that they are
marketable, particularly when assembled on
traditional streets within a walkable
neighborhood. These builders are now
elsewhere projecting New Urban communities,
and many others are following them. The list
is becoming longer, and it includes some
large companies.
Many individuals who
participated in the Celebration project have
gone on to influence the development
industry. The subsequent achievements of the
designers are well known. Peter Rummel has
since become CEO of the St. Joe Land
Corporation, with the largest real estate
holdings in Florida. St. Joe, having
purchased Arvida, is committed to the New
Urbanism and is now doing excellent work in
Watercolor (the extension of Seaside) as
well as half a dozen other large and
prominent sites. Celebration’s first town
architect, Joe Barnes, is now the general
manager at I’On. A group of executives has
spun off and now consults under the name of
Celebration Associates. Tom Lewis is a vice
president of Walt Disney World and a
resident of Celebration.15
Celebration promises to become the most
influential new town since Radburn, N.J.,
the project that in 1927 introduced the
cul-de-sac and the collector road to
America. This is obvious in Florida where,
like the ripples of a stone thrown in a
pond, the effect is more visible close to
the impact point. On any given day, you can
see developers troop through what is now the
most visible of the New Urbanist models.
Despite this projection, the question
persists: Is it economically possible to
build a Celebration without the deep pockets
of a Disney? The answer is yes; even the
main street is economically feasible. This
is demonstrated by a visit to Haile
Plantation in nearby Gainesville. This
superb New Urbanist community was designed
and developed by Robert Kramer under
conventional constraints. Haile Plantation,
as accomplished in every way as Celebration,
must become an integral part of any study
tour, so one cannot talk oneself out of a
commitment to the New Urbanism by concluding
that Celebration is a great concept but
“only Disney could do it.”
Why, then,
doesn’t The Celebration Company (or its
current parent company Disney Imagineering)
continue in the business of building new
towns? The answer is simple. For all its
success, the effort and time that it took to
develop Celebration made it comparably less
profitable than producing a single Disney
movie of even middling box office success.
It is not a rational allocation of Disney’s
resources to invest in further New Urbanist
projects.
But for the rest of us, it
is.
Andrés Duany
Endnotes:
1 This film was subsequently shown to
the designers of Celebration.
2
Eisner’s fascination with architecture may
have had its origins with Robert Stern’s
design for his parent’s New York apartment.
3 In Florida, a Seaside-type development
opens doors to permitting.
4 These
early plans are on record in a history album
at the Celebration sales office.
5
Seaside and Newpoint assessments for
precedent were led by Robert Stern.
6
Celebration is not a gated community. The
security forces are the Osceola county
sherrif.
7 I was pleased to find
that, adjacent to a lot I purchased for
research reasons, were houses occupied by a
black family and a gay couple. This sort of
random occurrence is considered highly
significant by those who reduce the judgment
of urbanism to quotas of diversity.
8
Besides, Route 192 is a brutal commercial
strip that would have destroyed the
environmental qualities of the Main Street.
9 There are two: a residential and a
commercial one. The former will one day be
entirely controlled by the residents. The
commercial association will likely continue
to be controlled by the Celebration Company.
Main street retail, like other modern
retailing must be centrally managed to
remain competitive.
10 These numbers
do not include the management associations
increasingly common in inner cities, or the
otherwise similar condominium associations.
11 To their credit, the authors of these
two books lived in Celebration for long
periods of time. That is why the books are
worth reading.
12 The result was
gratifying: I was not arrested, and the
damage was quickly made good.
13
Founders’ Day: November 18, 1995.
14
For example, in the writings of Alex
Marshall who has been proven wrong over the
years.
15 Tom Lewis may write a book
on Celebration. He is so evidently proud of
his (very real) achievements that one fears
that it will be overly celebratory.
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