Ever since Disneyland opened in 1955, the Disney effect has exerted a powerful pull on urban design. Cities and developers have increasingly embraced the notion of controlled environments where everything is color coordinated, meticulously maintained, and programmed for maximum visitor satisfaction. The ideal city is an area we cover in the Saving the City documentary series about how to make cities better places.
The Disney effect on urban design is no accident. Disney’s Main Street USA is a stylized version of early 20th-century small-town America where everything works and everyone is happy. As many cities failed for decades to provide clean, safe, and welcoming public spaces, developers saw an opportunity: build private spaces that look like cities but are governed by their owners, not the public.
The Disney effect on urban design is nowhere more visible than in Los Angeles. Developer Rick Caruso’s popular The Grove and The Americana at Brand in neighboring Glendale are among the most successful examples: village streets complete with free trolley rides, programmed town squares, and spotless surroundings that the Disney effect made possible. They are privately owned spaces designed to feel like public ones.
Other versions of Disney effect urban design include Santana Row in San Jose, the Domain in Austin, and Atlantic Station in Atlanta, all meant to mimic the energy and walkability of real cities while filtering out the messiness that makes real urban design what it is.
The Disney effect raises a fundamental challenge for downtown revitalization. If people can get a sanitized version of city life in a privately controlled environment, what incentive do cities have to do the hard work of improving their actual urban cores? The answer, as Saving the City documents, is that the Disney effect is a symptom, not a solution.
The cities winning at downtown revitalization are not competing with Disney. They are doing the harder work of making their actual streets, parks, and public spaces genuinely safe, welcoming, and alive. That is the future of downtowns that the Disney effect cannot replicate: real urban design, built by and for the people who live there.
Meet Eric Avila, professor of History and Chicano Studies at UCLA and a downtown Los Angeles resident, on the Disney effect and what it reveals about the future of urban design in American cities. Watch more videos.
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