Celebration : The Story of a Town

• Introduction by Jaquelin T. Robertson and Robert A.M. Stern
• CHAPTER 1 : IMAGINING A TOWN
• CHAPTER 2 : BUILDING A TOWN
• CHAPTER 3 : CREATING A COMMUNITY
• CHAPTER 4 : LOOKING FORWARD
• Postscript
• Index
• Acknowledgments

CELEBRATION, FLORIDA, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of The Walt Disney Company, is arguably the most successful planned community in America. Winner of numerous awards and the model for hundreds of neighborhoods across the continent, the town is the product of some of the most talented innovators and architects in this country and abroad.

Based loosely on the principles of "New Urbanism", Celebration is an attempt to find the future in some of the best practices of the past. At the same time, this gateless community is dedicated to the latest advances in education, health, and communications technology. And it's a town that places a high priority on involvement with one's neighbors. Celebration owes its existence to ten years of painstaking research and development prior to the arrival of the first residents in June 1996.

The richly illustrated Celebration : The Story of a Town is a look at the origins of this very real place, from Walt Disney's first futuristic notions of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) to the Celebration of 2004. Today, it's a stunningly attractive town where families work, go to school, visit doctors, attend movies, mow lawns, raise money, play golf, shop, dine, and organize social events - all in a spirit of American democracy at its best.

Michael Lassell lives in New York, where he is the features director of Metropolitan Home magazine. The award-winning author/editor of a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he holds degrees from Colgate University, California Institute of the Arts, and the Yale School of Drama. Over the past twenty years, his work has been published in scores of newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies. He is the author of Elton John and Tim Rice's AIDA and the editor of Disney on Broadway, both published by Disney Editions.

Celebration, Florida, is perhaps the most successful planned community in the country, having recently won a coveted Florida state civic award. What many people don't know is that Walt Disney's original concept for what later became Epcot® at Walt Disney World was exactly what Celebration is today - a thriving town where people live, work, go to school, attend to their health-care needs, shop, dine out, bank, and have myriad recreational opportunities. The richly illustrated Celebration : The Story of a Town explores the history of planned communities in America ; the original concepts for Celebration complete with input from architects, social historians, and perhaps most important, local residents ; and the ups and downs of this unique community as it establishes itself as one of Florida's most desired addresses.