Walt's (Deadly?) Airport: Exploring the Abandoned E.P.C.O.T. Plans
Added 2024-08-08 20:31:39 +0000 UTCIn the first Patreon-exclusive Defunctland After Dark video, Kevin follows up on his Walt's E.P.C.O.T. documentary by digging deeper into the plans and giving more insight into his personal feelings on the plans.
This is the first in a series of exclusive videos made for Patrons. Please do not share links to non-Patrons. We will have more videos to come but do not have a set schedule or frequency for them as of now. I hope you enjoy!
Comments
The ice rink and roller dome are the main things I look forward to when visiting Disney parks
Clovis Oldenberg
2025-06-15 23:18:17 +0000 UTCFinishing up your video I think it was so funny how I went through architecture/urban planning school thinking that Walt's ideas and plannings were so profound when now that i have had some time in the working world it makes sense why these ideas were always impractical. I always compared EPCOT to Le Corbusier's Radiant city and how we could create a "perfect world." I think all of that works great in theory, but Le Corbusier and Walt Disney got stuck in this world of make pretend where logic beat out our actual research on how cities grow. I understand where they were coming from, but its annoying to see how much money they wasted on the problem when the solution had already been/was in the process of being researched.
Chicofriend
2025-02-24 03:28:59 +0000 UTCtake a shot every time he says motel lol
benjamoom
2025-02-21 17:08:44 +0000 UTCI joined Patreon mostly for these videos. Your video on Epcot is one of my favorites and I am obsessed with it, and to hear more, especially your own thoughts. I think Walt's original plan for Epcot is one of the most terrifying realities we thankfully avoided, but also I want to know everything about it and imagine the Bioshock style future where it all falls apart. Thank you for your research, time, and opinions, and creating new special interests of mine to obsess over.
Ellen Kaluza
2024-11-02 13:55:58 +0000 UTCGreat video thank you for putting this together! Kevin (or anyone interested in EPCOT for that matter), if you haven't read the self written biography "Shopping Town" by Victor Gruen and also his book "Heart of our Cities," check these out as there is some great insight into the very specific design of these satellite radial cities, and also just the history of mid century futurism in architecture. The latter book presumably being read by Walt himself, as "Heart of our Cities" proposes a city nearly identical to Walt's plan. Though unlike Walt, Gruen figured out many of the functional problems and solutions to the plan. The radial design itself was inspired by the concentric ring roads that border Vienna. Gruen was an influential urban planner and architect in part due to being the originator of the shopping mall program in America, in addition to having political and academic influence, as he had president Lyndon B Johnson's ear. Through this portfolio of architecture and planning politics, he designed early master plans for Fort Worth/Dallas TX and Fresno CA. Specific functional design solutions for these cities which are too complex to describe here are also rational solutions to problems he had encountered in his radial city design that of course Walt was enamored with. Though that isn't to say EPCOT would have definitely worked if following the details developed by experienced architects like Gruen, as even functionally built spaces designed by world class architects often end in ruin like Pruitt Igoe for instance. It's important to note that Walt lived through the death of American cities, a concept well documented in books like the one by the same name from Jane Jacobs or films like "Koyaanisqatsi," with rising crime and poverty in the cities of the 1960s and what not. But what is not as well documented, outside the very niche history of SoCal planning, is that Walt being an angeleno in the 1960s also would have experienced the beginning of the home grown revolution that was tearing up the political landscape of Los Angeles at the time. A story well exposed in the book "City of Quartz." An ongoing conflict to this day that people often ignore, where you have constant battles between (usually wealthy) slow growth residential communities desiring walled gardens and (also wealthy) developers using political messaging as a smokescreen to build, build, build. Walt himself complained about developers outside DLR on Harbor and Katella, even though he himself was a mega developer. The ownership system of EPCOT, where Walt owns everything, basically mediates the never ending conflict between new developers and middle/upper class homeowners, via a Disney sponsored benevolent dictatorship. If that's really a solution or an even darker reality I suppose we'll never know, but I don't doubt that this conflict was a design trigger for EPCOT.
Josh H
2024-10-11 19:25:57 +0000 UTCThank you!
Hayley Mills
2024-08-18 03:06:17 +0000 UTCIf you connect your Patreon to your Discord, you will be addd automatically!
Defunctland
2024-08-17 16:02:07 +0000 UTCHello, can anyone tell me how to gain access to the discord?
Hayley Mills
2024-08-17 03:41:25 +0000 UTCThe concept of an “ideas man” is such a uniquely American way of viewing what are ultimately very successful salesmen. It’s a combination of two fundamental American archetypes: the inventor who saves time and money through a clever idea, and the con man who tricks marks into doing their work for them. Think Ben Franklin meets Tom Sawyer. Great video.
Isaac Napell
2024-08-15 03:16:58 +0000 UTCI am so glad the original plan for EPCOT never happened. People act like it is genius, but I swear those people never had to live in the cluster that is Disney College Program housing. If WDW can't even do dorm rooms well there is no way they'd do a full city well.
Orlando
2024-08-15 01:02:37 +0000 UTCHaven’t gotten a chance to watch yet, absolutely will be watching today, but just had to say I can’t even explain how excited I got to find defunctland on Patreon!!! Immediately had to join
Marisa
2024-08-14 22:47:48 +0000 UTCEpic as always Kevin
Donnie Kit
2024-08-14 19:16:27 +0000 UTCI can't tell if Walt had undiagnosed dementia and due to his previous successes nobody noticed or if there's some fundamental piece of data I'm missing that makes radial design the best.
David A Behlman
2024-08-14 00:32:34 +0000 UTCamazing! love this
Yara Tovar
2024-08-12 21:31:10 +0000 UTCAaah! I'm so excited! Watching this while editing a project!
Gracie Linn
2024-08-11 18:38:43 +0000 UTCLove the format, I think this is the right venue for more opinions and a looser feel. It's like being a few drinks in with friends. Thanks for having us over.
Snowbun
2024-08-09 12:20:34 +0000 UTCWow! Great video. It really got me thinking about how we idealize creatives like Walt even though they are not experts in a practical field -- rather, they are experts in advertising. We see that same kind of Walt worship from the comment sections today about "visionaries" like Musk and Trump, who make a career out of selling visions of fantasy. "The American Dream," at its oldest, has always just been an ad buy-in. Simultaneously fascinating and depressing to think about.
tumbleweed🍂
2024-08-09 11:41:06 +0000 UTCI don't know what I was expecting when I started this video. I was picturing more of a podcast with a few images. This is basically just Defunctland Mini. Love this! The airport truly would have looked cool for at least opening day. It would not have lasted a month though, No matter how you look at it. A Doomed Island with Sharks flying directly at it.
Imagination Station
2024-08-09 07:21:39 +0000 UTCThis was amazing! My dad and I really enjoyed the explosions. The casual vibe is perfect
AssertiveSalamander
2024-08-09 03:52:38 +0000 UTCGreat first vid! Was not expecting this length and level of polish for this series, but so stoked to see it!
Margaret Fleck
2024-08-09 01:19:36 +0000 UTCHmmm, I'd say the airport terminal is indeed only supposed to be the black dot in the centre; the rest of the map's figure ground uses black for the buildings, so that would likely follow here. The dot may look small compared to the gen aviation area, but that's because the gen aviation's big black boxes are hangars for the private jets and for maintenance, vs its own small dot (with three spikes off of it?) for the terminal building. Great episode and a great start to the after dark series! :)
Oliver 'Kannik' Bollmann
2024-08-09 00:48:39 +0000 UTCStick to trains, Walt
Sydney Pittner
2024-08-09 00:20:00 +0000 UTCSo with the radial runway design, it's not that radical of an idea and a similar design was pitched for O'hare when it was built out in the 50s before getting scaled back. You don't use them all at once, just the ones that align with the prevailing winds. Newer planes are better equipped for crosswind operations so airports generally build the runways parallel with maybe one or two alternates when needed but back in the day required options at various angles which is why you tended to see the triangle layouts. The radial design would have takeoffs on the one going away from the terminal and landings on the one going inward to reduce taxi times. Denver's German bad guy symbol is the same principal because the winds are unpredictable and have to change directions frequently but no other major airports have used it because it's just not that practical in most cases.
Jay Swanson
2024-08-08 22:10:01 +0000 UTCWatching and enjoying right now!
Sarah
2024-08-08 21:31:27 +0000 UTCGreat first entry to Defunctland After Dark! It felt like a good mixture of traditional videos and WWP, factual/technical meets opinions. Love it!
Noah Key
2024-08-08 21:13:28 +0000 UTCYessss!
Meys Quintana
2024-08-08 20:39:56 +0000 UTCI love you
Keegan Sinur
2024-08-08 20:33:21 +0000 UTCoh man, i cannot wait to watch
Sephiroth1204
2024-08-08 20:32:53 +0000 UTC
