COMM 149F - City of Domes

"It will be a planned, controlled community; a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees, because everyone will be employed according to their ability. One of our requirements is that the people who live in EPCOT must help keep it alive."

Following the 1939-40 World's Fair, the rhetoric of authority opens wide the gates of tomorrow, but not for everyone. Even as superhighways, nuclear-powered cities, and gleaming appliances fill our cultural landscape, dystopian fears of totalitarianism have not been crushed with the defeat of Axis powers. The federal government has become a more significant force in public life than ever before. Thousands of suburban gardens bloom, but the subtle machinery of control grows just beneath America's well-manicured lawns.

The Original E.P.C.O.T. [Sebastien Barthe]

Aerial view of EPCOT by George Rester [modified by Herbert Ryman] image from Original E.P.C.O.T. website

	Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Andrew.Wood@sjsu.edu