Thursday, January 30, 2020

Not quite Homer's monorail

Surprise!
Orlando, FL
January 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram
When a passing monorail photobombs your picture of the giant golf ball in the sky, your only choice is to shoot first and figure it out later.

I know it's a theme park, where everything is programmed and calculated to deliver a specific experience in a specific manner. I know this isn't reality, that the Utopian vision baked into every facet of this overwhelming place is barely sustainable outside the main gates. I get that all of Walt Disney's outsized optimism was ultimately designed to do one thing: Sell us more stuff we likely don't need.

But still, this place makes you think about what could be if we manage get our collective act together, if we decide global interests matter more than regional, national, and individual ones. If we decide to finally look at our differences as reasons to connect instead of separate.

Overly optimistic? Of course. But optimism never hurt anyone.

The monorail, in particular, still feels like a future transportation vision come to life, a nod toward sustainable placemaking where communities are designed around collective transportation networks that don't start and end with the car. Again, this is uber-commercial Disney, but the fact that something conceived in the 1950s still looks and feels current in 2020 is remarkable.

Wouldn't it be nice if more city planners came to this place, then returned home with heads full of ideas for a better future? Don't we all need some kind of spark? And shouldn't those sparks be as diverse and wild as can be?

Maybe there's more to a place like this than Fast Passes, Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears, and overpriced junk food.

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