'McMansions': Walt Disney's utopian dream [US]

Walt Disney's utopian dream forever changed Orlando, Florida, and laid 
the blueprint for the new American metropolis.


Everything happening to America today is happening here, and it's far 
removed from the cookie-cutter suburbanization of life a generation ago. 
The Orlando region has become Exhibit A for the ascendant power of our 
cities' exurbs: blobby coalescences of look-alike, overnight, 
amoeba-like concentrations of population far from city centers. These 
huge, sprawling communities are where more and more Americans choose to 
be, the place where job growth is fastest, home building is briskest, 
and malls and megachurches are multiplying as newcomers keep on coming. 
Who are all these people? They're you, they're me, and increasingly, 
they are nothing like the blue-eyed "Dick and Jane" of mythical suburban 
America.

Orlando's explosion is visible in every shopping mall and traffic jam. 
You can also see it from outer space. When Earth satellites were first 
launched, Florida photographed at night looked like two l's standing 
side by side: One long string of lights ran down the Atlantic side of 
the peninsula; another ran along the Gulf of Mexico side. In between was 
darkness. Today the two parallel l's have become a lopsided H. Central 
Florida glows as though a phosphorescent creature from outer space has 
landed there and started reproducing. It gobbles up existing communities 
even as it transforms scrub and swamp into a characterless conurbation 
of congested freeways and parking lots. All of this is "Orlando," the 
brand name for this region of two million residents.

cont'd....
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