Lessons in Urban Planning from Disney

I come from a Disney family. Yea, one of those families. The road trip down to LA once a year type family. I remember not being able to sleep the night before because I was so excited. I’ve grown a little bit now, to the point where I hesitate before buying the four-dollar churro, but Disney still inspires me.

Just now it isn’t the rides or the food, but the atmosphere Disney Imagineers have created throughout the parks. There is a sense of contentment walking through New Orlean’s square or a feeling of excitement in Adventureland that you don’t get in most cities. It's the same feeling that people get exploring the canals of Venice, or boulevards of Paris and I think the main reason why Americans shell out 200 bucks a day to visit Disneyland.

What are the characteristics that make these cities so appealing, and how did Disney capture them so well? Early in March, Disney put out a documentary called The Imagineering Story, which detailed the history of the Imagineers, the people who design Disney parks. As I was watching, I started to notice similarities between the design rules that Disney used and principles in urban planning. Principles that are best exemplified in these special cities like Amsterdam or Paris. These are the Disney design rules that are seen in the great cities in the world and should be used in all of them.

1. Attention to Detail/Pretty

The first thing one sees after walking into Disneyland is a giant Mickey head created out of hundreds of flowers, always perfectly in bloom. As you walk through the park, it is rare to see any sort of litter, and any exceptions are immediately swept up by Disney’s army of cast members. Everything, from the manhole covers to the water bottles, proudly display the iconic silhouette of Mickey Mouse.

Disney was one of the first companies to understand that it's the details, even the ones that you don’t notice, that make the experience. A Harvard Business Review said that Disney “nailed attention to detail well before Apple,”(hbr.org, 2012) a company that has built its reputation off that principle. In the line for Indiana Jones, guests pass the time by attempting to translate the indigenous language Imagineers created for the temple. In Frontierland, hoof prints and wagon lines imprinted into the specially-designed concrete gives the impression that a covered wagon just passed by. In Tomorrowland, all the plant life is edible, an example of what modern farming could look like in the future. These extra details are what sets Disneyland apart from the competition and make the park that much more pleasant to visit. You don’t see this at Seaworld.

These details are usually glossed over during city budget meetings. Why would a city spend extra money on hiring an extra garbage truck to maintain cleanliness standards or increasing the budget on a freeway overpass and turn it into an art piece? In that same vein, why should I, a taxpayer, have to pay extra just for a couple extra sculptures in the park. I don’t even go to the park! (It's a long walk)

The thing is, attention to detail is what makes a place special and beautiful. The potted plants by the front door, the noticeably litter-free downtown with the cool new art piece in the middle. The prettier a place, the more likely the people who inhabit that place are going to take ownership of it and take better care of the said place, and the less the city is going to have to pay in upkeep in the future. Imagine if our freeway overpasses looked like old Roman aqueducts instead of the ugly concrete monstrosities they are now. Any sort of vandalization would be the scandal of the town. 

A modern freeway overpass versus an old Roman Aqueduct. Which would you like more in your backyard? Which would you spend more effort maintaining?

2. Blend of Old and New

But what makes a place attractive? Isn’t beauty subjective?

Science says otherwise, at least to a point. There is this concept called the creative curve that author Allen Garnet popularized in his book by the same name that explains the human preference for creative ideas. This curve is based on the principle that humans like things that are a combination of familiarity and novelty.

Let me explain. When our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and spent their days looking for food, they would often find plants and animals that they had never seen before. Let's say one of them, named Darryl, found a berry that nobody had seen before. Darryl would be more likely to try it if it had similar characteristics of a berry he already knew was safe. His first desire is to be safe, eating something he is pretty sure is edible, but it is also balanced by his desire for something new and the added benefit that might have. If this berry is edible, that's an additional food source for Darryl. 

We don’t need to taste test berries anymore (the Darryls of the world have already done that for us) but if you look at the globalized world now, a lot of the creative ideas that have gone mainstream make use of this creative curve. Viral songs remix beats and samples from the past. Each age of painting adds its own twist to the one before.

Steve Jobs, who knew a thing or two about design, made use of this principle with Apple products. Originally, the iPhone was going to have straight edges instead of rounded corners. Steve took the designer out into San Francisco and pointed out every street sign and traffic light he could until the designer relented. One of the reasons Jobs thinks the iMac sold so well was because of the calligraphy he insisted be a part of the word processor. All of these are familiar things people knew and understood which gave people the courage to try these products that had never been seen before. If they looked too unfamiliar, people would have balked. 

The creative curve is seen all over Disneyland Park. Main Street is a blast of nostalgia and familiarity with its typical small-town American design, but the street frames a fantastical castle in the distance. In the new Star Wars land, designers were tasked with creating an entirely new world never before seen in the films. To make this alien world seem familiar, the architects and artists drew inspiration from iconic architecture in cities such as Jerusalem, Instanbul, and multiple cities in Morocco. 

3. Constantly Evolving

The Haunted Mansion decorated for Christmas.

The problem with the creative curve, however, is that once an idea or concept becomes too familiar, people start to lose interest. There is no longer that novelty factor that keeps us interested. Even iPhones lose their luster after a few months of use and a brand new model hovering over the horizon.

Disney solves this problem by constantly evolving. Walt himself had the quote, “Disneyland will never be finished. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world” Every Halloween and Christmas, Disneyland completely redecorates and changes the storylines of some of its rides like Haunted Mansion and Its a Small World. Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, and Star Tours have all seen upgrades in the last few years that improved the ride’s props, animatronics, and or completely revamped the story of the entire ride. In California Adventure, the last 10 years or so have seen the complete overhaul of its main street entrance, the retheming of Pixar Pier, and the addition of Cars Land. In a couple of years, an entirely new land will open up where the Bugs life area used to be, and it goes without saying that Disney has many plans already in the works for future changes and upgrades.

Every time a new skyscraper is added to the San Franciscan skyline I always want to visit, but it is important to note that change has consequences; consequences I do not have to deal with as someone who lives outside the city. With every change, both in cities and theme parks, the entire system is going to be affected. New apartment buildings and office complexes bring extra traffic and congestion to the city and could change housing prices to the point of gentrification. New lands in Disneyland and California Adventure increased the crowd size almost to unbearable sizes and took away from the rest of the park. When the new Star Wars land opened in Disneyland, the lines there were over two hours in length, while the rest of the park sat damn near empty.

So while it is important to keep evolving as a place, great care has to be made in the decisions to change. Theme parks don’t have to worry about gentrification or construction annoying the neighbors, cities need to. While the San Franciscan skyline has grown, gentrification has spread throughout the entire region as housing prices shot up to insane levels. While our NBA team the Warriors moved into a brand new arena downtown, our public transportation system is largely the same it’s been for 50 years. These housing and transportation problems might be a good place to start.

4. Enclosed

There is only one spot in all of Disneyland where one can see the outside world; the very top of the Matterhorn, and even then you only get glimpses. The real world is scary, and humans don’t like being in wide open spaces. It is a habit leftover from our less civilized ancestors who over thousands of years figured that being out in the open meant that you were exposed to all the scary cats and crocodiles that could eat us. Instead, we associated safety with enclosures, walls that keep out anything that might want to eat me for a light snack.

This works up to an extent, as once buildings become too tall they start to become overbearing and not a little bit scary, especially in earthquake-prone California. I remember driving through San Francisco as a child and gazing almost directly up at the 70 plus story Bank of America building and imagining just how bad of a day I would have if an earthquake decided to happen exactly at that moment. Contrast cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York with that of Paris, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. Walking through those streets bring about the safe feeling of enclosure all without blocking out the sun with an 85-story monstrosity of glass and steel.

What walking down the street looks like in New York City

Walking down the street in Amsterdam.

At Disney every single building is at most three stories, providing this gentle density that we crave while not blotting out the sun. In addition to this, natural-looking barriers block our view from other lands and the outside world, keeping our focus in our current environment without distracting our brain with things that don’t belong. Think of the way the desert wall of Cars Land gently wraps around the town of Radiator Springs, or how walking through New Orleans Square, one would have no idea of the existence of the alien environment of Star Wars land that sits just over the hill. Tom Sawyer’s island would look weird with the Millenium Falcon in the background of the Temple of Indiana Jones with New Orleans square.

This artificial topography wraps around Cars Land and obstructs the view of Anaheim city behind it and Pixar Pier to its right.

5. Weenie

The Weenie is one of Disney’s greatest tools, even if also one of their biggest failures in naming. A weenie is a landmark or objects the provides orientation around a given area. Cinderella’s Castle is one. The Matterhorn replica could be another. In California, the Ferris Wheel works just as well. Easily recognizable and distinct, usually due to their looming size, spotting a weenie will immediately tell the observer where they are in relation to the weenie, and therefore where they are in the park/city. It's like a compass, just larger. 

A great example from an urban environment would be the Duomo in Florence. While I was a student there, most of our directions revolved around the Duomo. The book shop is just three blocks past the Duomo. That cafe is a block past the Duomo to the right. If you were lost, all you needed to do was find the Duomo spire in the sky and you knew exactly where you were. (This is an added benefit of gentle density with few story buildings. It would be hard to spot the duomo if it was surrounded by skyscrapers.) 

College campuses have similar tools. The Campanile at UC Berkeley is a good one, it can be spotted by a lost freshman from pretty much anywhere on campus. Up in Spokane at my own college Gonzaga, St. Aloysius church does a great job as well. If by some chance I was stumbling around lost in the neighborhood surrounding the college, all I need to do is find one of its spires in the sky and I know exactly where I am. 

Note how the Duomo stands tall over the rest of the Florentine skyline.

The Campanile at UC Berkeley

You can fault Disney with a lot of issues; their near-monopoly over entertainment, its poor treatment of workers, its prices, (4.75 for a churro should be a capital offense) but one thing that you cannot take away from them is that they make damn good theme parks. The reason they were able to do this, by following these five main design rules, rules that they derived from the world's greatest cities. 

If you would like to learn more about what makes a city great, I definitely would recommend this video made by the School of Life. There are many more principles that go into making cities great, principles I didn’t include because they were either not important enough to mention or not applicable to theme parks and therefore Disney. (Or because I was lazy, you decide.) 

All of these rules, like all good things in our world, require money, something cities always seem to be lacking. In my next article, I will outline some interesting ideas from the book, The New Localism, that might be able to help in that aspect. That can be found here, once it's finished. 

Photo Credit

• Cover photo by Jonathan Körner

• Overpass photo by Aaron Munoz

• Aqueduct photo by Sébastien Jermer

• Haunted Mansion photo by Ben Lei

• New York Street by Brandon Green

• Amsterdam Street by Vinícius Henrique

• Carsland photo by

• Florence Picture by Gonzaga University

• Campanile photo by me (Can’t you tell?)

The New Localism

Photo by Monica Bourgeau on Unsplash

It is crazy to me that cities work. That millions of people manage to live their lives together every day with (mostly) no mishaps. That buildings are powered and watered, streets are cleaned, garbage collected, and that Sam is more or less cordial with his neighbors Jane, John, Peter, Susan and the rest of his floor and building and block. How that all works is insane.

And cities are growing, or at least they were pre-COVID. There might be some adjustments in the numbers now, but the UN estimated that in 2050 almost 70% of the population will live in urban areas.  Already in the United States, a country much less dense than similar states in Europe of Asia, 2/3 of the population live in cities in an area that composes of only 3.5 percent of the total land area. The growth of cities may slow due to COVID, but they will remain an important factor of for the lives of billions for years to come.

Why are cities such a big deal, and why are they growing? Authors Bruce Katz and Jeremy Novak think they know.  One, cities have always been useful to society due to their natural agglomeration of resources and opportunities. There are more jobs, homes, and opportunities in cities than there are in the country, just because everything is closer. Also, cities have benefited from the rise of the global economy. Bruce and Jeremy state in their book, The New Localism, that “many urban institutions have become more relevant in the global economy. Medical facilities, universities, and other research institutions attract tech startups and venture capital.” Tech startups like Google, Apple, Microsoft have an unparalleled impact on the economy, and rely of the connections and institutions that are only available in dense urban environments. Stanford and San Francisco were a huge part of the creation of Silicon Valley. Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh worked with the city of Pittsburgh to create a similar area of innovation in robotics in Pennsylvania. Boston owes a lot of its success to the fact that there are hundreds of world class universities within a 20 minute ride from downtown. 

As cities have grown with the advent of globalism and the internet, so have its problems. Cities, as a combination of private and public space, theoretically should be democratic and equal in its accessibility. Bruce and Jeremy again write “Low income should have access to just as good schools as high income. Unfortunately, that is not the case in many places and erodes shared identity and creates divisions.” Columbia University thrives while the surrounding neighborhood of Morningside Heights declines. San Francisco, while experiencing unheard economic growth from Silicon Valley faces a crushing housing crisis that drove out many people from the city to lower-income areas in the suburbs. A single policy, such as redlining which was popular in the 20th century and still used today, or the construction of a freeway overpass can deny whole neighborhoods of people from many benefits all of the citizens should share.

The burden of fixing these problems falls not to the state or federal government, but to the cities, a problem that Bruce and Jeremy think that cities are well equipped to handle by utilizing a theory called localism. Localism describes a broad range of philosophies but can be boiled down to preference for the local. It can be seen across many different domains, agriculturally in the slow food movement that came out of Italy, socially in the preference for smaller communities over large ones, in business with the idea of small fast companies over large corporations. Politically, it speaks to the devolution of power from federal and state levels to the local levels and redistributing it to the people who actually live in said area. Instead of asking permission from D.C. or Olympia, WA, the city of Spokane has the agency to solve its own problems. This can come from two different areas, the local government, or the locals themselves. In The New Localism, two different types of strategies of localism are used to solve their cities’ problems.

 One could assume that to get anything done in a city, they would need to go through the famously inefficient city hall to get approval. Rather, the citizens of the city can do a lot without having to spend 10 years waiting in the chamber of commerce waiting room. Bruce and Jeremy talk of one-way citizens can come together to create change in their communities by bringing business CEOs and institutional leaders-like university presidents and hospital directors, and their combined power together to form collaborations. These groups devise regional strategy and research, create funds based on pooled resources, and then re-invest those funds back into the community, all without thinking about a permit.

An example of this is the Central Indiana Corporate partnership, (CICP), which is composed of 60 of the region’s best CEOs, presidents, philanthropy directors, and other institutional leaders. Free from the bureaucracy of city hall, the CICP has a lot more agency to spur economic growth in the region. Their methods include identifying key points of strength in the region, helping businesses craft business plans to capitalize on said opportunity, then supporting the new venture with help in marketing and fundraising. Collaborations like this better utilize the community’s resources due to its consolidation and fill in the void government was supposed to fill as investors in their communities. Similar ventures have sprung up since. In Cleveland, a similar group of leaders formed the Cleveland Tomorrow Group to revitalize the crumbling city center. In Cincinnati, the mayor encouraged the CEO-led Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation that oversees the re-development of the greater downtown area. Makes you wonder though, why the mayor couldn’t do it himself. What would it look like if cities were able to leverage their power business leaders and philanthropies? Do cities even have enough assets at their disposal to make a worthwhile impact. After all, they aren’t making that type of money. Bruce and Jeremy think they do.

One of the main ideas the book The New Localism promotes is that cities have a lot of underleveraged power at disposal, but this power is too spread out and disorganized amongst a million different authorities to be properly utilized.  Land and other assets are divided between airport authorities, parks and rec departments, water and gas agencies, the list goes on and on. While this decentralization prevents corruption it also prevents utilization. Cities can use these assets to grow their city in a process called the Copenhagen method, an idea that came out of the Danish capital to solve a housing shortage in the city. This method involves the creation of a public corporation that is transferred land and other required assets by the government to do its job. The government then goes and rezones the transferred land for commercial/residential use, which increases the value of the land. The corporation borrows based off that that increased value, creates infrastructure (gas/electric lines, access to public transportation) so that the land is more appealing to developers, and sells/leases that land at its increased value to service its debt.

An example of this can be seen in the development of transit villages by my local public rail line, BART. BART has stations in almost every major city in the Bay Area and are surrounded by these huge parking lots. In an attempt to ease traffic congestion and provide additional housing in an area facing a shortage of such, BART began building transit villages where these parking lots stood. To do so, they worked with local government to re-zone the land where the parking was, which then allowed them to lease/sell the land to developers. All this revenue goes towards the continued upkeep of the BART transit system itself, which has been struggling in its later years.

These ideas and methods seem like they should perfectly.  I’ll admit that as I was reading this book, all of these sounded like no brainers. However, a city is so much more than an economy. There are a million other factors at play here; how will this affect the community, the identity of the neighborhood, the people who live there. Will the community be able to grow with new development, or will the lack of opportunities force them out like it has done in San Francisco? Will business leaders and University Presidents be able to use their power for the betterment of the community, or will one fall prey to temptation and ruin it for everyone. Race, equitable access, and regional foresight all need to be a part of development and planning. I think the authors were on the right track, they just failed to see past improving the economy. 

As cities continue to grow, so will their power. Eventually, the big cities of the United States, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and many others will no longer see a need for state and federal oversight. The people of the city will begin to do what they always used to do before the creation of big states; they will begin to solve their problems themselves.

DISC-UC Berkeley Summer Program

This past summer I spent 5 weeks at Berkeley in the UC Berkeley DISC Architecture program. I met some awesome people, learned a great deal, and had a lot of laughs. Here are some thoughts about it.

DISC is an interdisciplinary program run by the Berkeley School of Environmental design. It takes students from all over the world with different educational experiences and for five weeks teaches architecture and urban studies concepts. Each DISC program revolves around an urban problem that the Bay Area region is facing. This year, the program looked at the growing housing crisis and how it is affecting the Bay. In response, our class was divided up into groups to create transit oriented developments around BART stations, the local transit system. Throughout the program we learned ways of looking at this problem, tools used to solve it, and finally how to present solutions in understandable and persuasive ways. 

The class was divided up into three parts, all of which revolve around our project. We had  lecturers four times a week, workshops where we learned how to use different softwares, and studio work in which we worked on our projects. The lecturers were both inspiring and informative, and included local experts in the region such as the host of the podcast 99% invisible, and professors who both taught at Berkeley while working at impressive studios in San Francisco. The workshops were informative as well, but most of the learning occurred in the studio work.

Studio work was where it all happened. I got to work with two incredibly smart ladies, one from North Carolina, the other from Mumbai, India. It must be understood that I am not an architecture student. I have some aspirations of becoming one, but my knowledge of the subject was almost zero. That was the same of half my class. The other half of the class was at least in their third year of architecture school. Thank the good lord I got put with these guys, as they may have carried my uneducated rear more than once.

We started our project by learning how to and conducting site analysis on the station we were going to build the development on. This included looking at factors such as the slope of the site a where all the major building and infrastructure is located, as well as looking at the neighborhood as a whole; the average density, where the roads are, how high are the buildings, etc. We used all this information to create several different scenarios that we thought could work, and then tested these scenarios with possible events that could occur. For example, how would the site react to a housing crisis. From this we picked a scenario we wanted to continue with, and started to create a housing development based off that scenario. Over  the course of the week, we would present our development to our professors for critique on both the development and how we presented it. By the end of the five weeks, we had a development that we were pretty proud of.

Big thanks to the DISC program leaders and to UC Berkeley for having me this summer. To the right you can find the three posters that we used to present our development, as well as a few photos from my time there. I will definitely miss my time there.