Disney and the Urban Amusement Park
In much the same way as once the Luna Park formula changed the face of Times Square, the injection of Disney should reinvent the area as the cross-roads of the world. Disneyland is today's Luna Park, and the similarities are manifold.

Just as Luna Park was presented as a place far away from everyday life, Disney World (in Florida) and the Disney Lands (in California, Japan, and France) offer a similar escape from reality. Even more than the Moon being the destination of the Luna Park visitor, Disney is a vacation destination of its own. Disney World even has an official airline, Delta, a perfect symbol for its nationhood. Visitors can pay with either regular US Dollars or with "Disney Dollars", which can be exchanged one to one at the entrance of the park. While the Mickey Mouse money offers no advantage or discount in any way, it adds yet another degree of foreign-ness to the park.11

And just like Luna Park, Disney is a descendant from the great expositions of the 19th century, derived from the industrial revolution. The 1851 Great Exposition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in London was the first great utopia of global capital, displaying collected modern technologies in the first entirely prefabricated winter garden. Later, the fairs became differentiated, consisting of thematically arranged pavilions (manufacture, transport, science, etc.), entertainment oriented, national, and corporate pavilions. As the fairs grew, they also began to showcase utopian urbanism, displaying the cities of the future in both their pavilions as in their plans. While most of the ideas originated from Europe, America became the tabula rasa for utopian experiments.12

Alongside the City Beautiful movement which evolved from the fairs, came the garden city movement, promoted by the Englishman Ebenezer Howard in Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902). Many of the patterns originating from the garden city have been incorporated in the layout of the Disney Parks. In short, these ideas included a radial plan around a single center, the separation of pedestrians and vehicles, and functions in walking distance. The 1933 Century of Progress Exposition held in Chicago was the first to elevate all means of movement, pre-existing the famous Disney monorail.

Even more closely related to the World Fairs is Disney World's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). Located in the vicinity of Disney World, a short and scenic monorail ride away, everything about it resembles the great fairs: the garden city plan; the geodesic sphere in the center; the corporate and national pavilions. As in many Disney-rides, the visitors roll past perfectly orchestrated animatronic scenes in tiny cabs, an invention also brought forth by the World Fairs.13

One of the major goals of the 42nd Street Development Project is to continue to attract the 20 million tourists that visit the area each year. For such as purpose, it seems all the more fitting that Disney take part in the plan. Amusement parks have continued to draw tourists, and Disney is the undisputed world leader. The current course of actions seems to follow the City Beautiful movement of the early 20th century. The Beaux-Arts architecture of the great fairs had been viewed as a great improvement to the city and a strong attractor of tourists. Similarly, it is now believed that the Disney-esque "architainment" can bring new life to the city. As the Beaux-Arts architecture was a baroque classicist style relying on imagery of the past, the Disney-esque architainment, ironically, recycles the honky-tonk Times Square / Luna Park baroque onto the area itself. Disneyland's famous Main Street Electrical Parade can be seen as mobile version of the Great White Way. Nightly, the entirely illuminated carriages and vehicles of the parade roll past the parks' visitors at the same pace one could walk across Times Square, creating a similar experience. Likewise, typical Disney architecture is an eclectic mix of past, present and futuristic styles mixed, jumbled and juxtaposed for maximum effect.

Shopping and entertainment have continued to grow closer to one another. The turn-of-the-century department stores were the first to promote mass consumerism in the form of shopping, as an entertaining activity. Early in their existence, department stores had already discovered that a theatrical presentation of goods could fascinate its customers. Scenery window displays transformed ordinary goods into more desirable goods.14

Throughout the 20th century, and especially in the last three decades, the lines between retailing and entertainment have become blurred. Sports stores have simulators to test athletic skills (and products); music stores offer video performance and sometime live concerts; restaurants like Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe are the museums of popular culture, all turning the experience of shopping and eating into an entertaining and cultural event. "Megamalls," such as the gigantic West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada have turned shopping into an over-the-top entertainment experience. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the largest shopping mall in the world. The complex holds a number of other Guinness titles, such as the World's Largest Indoor Amusement Park, World's Largest Indoor Water Park, and the World's Largest Parking Lot. The mall also holds a full-size skating rink, 13 nightclubs, 20 movie theatres, and a 360-room hotel, aside from more than 800 shops, 11 department stores and 110 restaurants. The mall's developers intended to make sure that the shops would have plenty of visitors, creating a complete, self-contained entertainment city. In much the same way as Daniel Burnham predicted that his plans would attract tourists (see page 4), one of the mall's developers shouted at the opening, "What we have done means you don't have to go to New York or Paris or Disneyland or Hawaii. We have it all here for you in one place, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada!"15 The combination of 'architainment' and retail seem to make a typical late 20th century tourist draw. A massive shopping venue encased in merry architecture and impregnated with entertainment are the city centers of tomorrow. It is this set of images, in part derived from Times Square, that will be re-imposed on the area itself.