What do you think? Would you like to live in Disney’s EPCOT?

Are you dying Walt: Dying to build a city of the future, amirite?

“He was so obsessed with the planning of Epcot that he was planning the city on the ceiling tiles of his hospital bed before he died” He’s a man of focus, commitment, and sheer ducking will

I want to attempt to build something like this in Cities: Skylines now

There’s a Disney people mover in the Houston airport! Technology connections did a great video on it

Congrats on the new baby! Really enjoy your channel.

Walt Disney was already experimenting with the radial design when he built Disneyland in 1955. The entire park was based on a hub and spoke pattern, designed to move people efficiently around the park. In fact one of his designers went into urban planning (I forget which one unfortunately) and helped design the master plan for the city of Irvine which itself is loosely based on a radial pattern but on a much larger scale. This would be most evident in the Woodbridge Village of Irvine. This same person also designed Newport Center which is where the Irvine Company is based. Newport Center Drive is a big circular street surrounded by businesses and hotels (and more recently encroaching apartment complexes) with a shopping mall at the center of the circle.

Detroit uses an automated peoplemover system. It’s aging but it’s cool to see cities use automated peoplemovers for public transit needs instead of an underground metro. Epcot’s my favorite park. I like the World's Fair concept, I live on Long Island near the site of the 1964 World's Fair where Disney debuted It's A Small World, Carousel of Progress, and Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Although Epcot doesn't have a peoplemover, Magic Kingdom does and it's a relaxing ride

In Belgium there's a city of about 30,000 people called Louvain-la-Neuve (literally New-Leuven) that was entirely built in the 70's by the university of Leuven. The whole city was built in a valley and since the university wanted a flat pedestrian city they decided to do a deck where you'd walk and live and under the whole city there's a parking lot so it's dead easy to go around town by car because you can park right under where you go. It proves Walt Disney wasn't completely crazy, IT WORKS!

Epcot was going to be feudal housing for the magic Kingdom

Whoa! You have THREE kids??? 🍻 Congrats, man! 👨‍🎓Good luck with your PhD and thanks for all the cool and informative videos!

"The cars never stop moving" except for when an obese person or old person with mobility issues can't get ride on the fast enough...which is like every 5 minutes at Disney World

There's one small part of the Guangzhou metro called something like "people mover," but most of the transit system is the more common metro train with a conductor. I think that people mover line is called the AMP line

I recognize that hospital! It's the same place my son was born. Congratulations!

Congrats on the new addition to your family!

Not long after Disney World opened, a transit people mover was installed in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Im a Disney Artist and I’ve always wanted to learn more about Walt’s EPCOT. This video was wonderful. Thank youuuuu

Some cities use Gondola lifts. They basically are people movers. Never stoping and you board them as they move. See the one in La Paz Bolivia

Congrats on #3! This channel is really so well done. Kudos and good luck!

Thank you for making this! As an avid Disney fan, I've always known about Epcot the city, but have failed to find information about whether or not it his plans for the city would actually work! Thanks for providing some context to his plans.

Glad you finally did a video on EPCOT. I love this channel and your ideas for more pedestrian friendly cities. I feel like if Disney had lived longer, American cities and the transportation industry would be wildly different today. Keep it up!

7:55 Victor Gruen was actually Austrian, not Swiss ;) Btw, congratulations to your 3rd child!

It would be really exciting if we could take some of Mr. Disney's plans for Epcot and turn them into 3D virtual reality models that could experienced in the Unreal engine. That would give people a better idea of his plans for the future.

I laughed at the way you said "This is my THIRD kid!"

A lot of commenters have been arguing about the term "PeopleMover," as some note the existence of different urban and airport PeopleMover systems. Let's clear that up. "PeopleMover" is commonly a generic term for smaller-scale AGT (Automated Guideway Transit) systems of varying design. Disney's PeopleMover is just one of MANY such designs, specifically known as the "WEDway PeopleMover." There were three of these built in the USA: two in Disney parks and one at IAH in Houston TX. The tracks do NOT "move," as was incorrectly stated in the video. Instead, the WEDway design uses LIM (Linear Induction Motor) technology to propel the trains magnetically. The Detroit PeopleMover is a rail-based design that also uses LIM tech. The Miami MetroMover is a PeopleMover that is basically an elevated electric bus network. The Jacksonville Skyway uses conventional small-scale monorail tech.

Your channel makes my world builder's soul very happy.

The Walt Disney Company had a mass-transit division that was created to build monorail and WEDway PeopleMover systems for non-Disney uses. Houston's international airport does feature a WEDway installation.

What do you think about the concept "linear city"? Like in the book Roadtown (1910) by Edgar Chambless I would like to hear your thoughts.

Great video and huge congrats on the new baby!!

The Walt Disney Company's mass-transit division did sell one WEDway PeopleMover system to Houston's international airport.

Detroit, MI has a “people mover!” It’s a pain in a butt to use, though, since it only takes special tokens and goes to limited locations in the city. You should do a whole video on Detroit!

Hey. I love your videos; especially the Vancouver and Los Angeles (my city) ones... I’ve been on a binge today :) One thing I’d like to bring up is that Disney has different people movers. Disneyland has one that has been shut down and Disney World has a couple. You are correct in that the one you were riding in this video does not have an on board engine, but it’s not the cable car mover, that’s a different one. This one is propelled by a Linear Induction motor; which is similar to those found found on the Vancouver Skytrain, JFK Airtrain, a someone hidden people mover at IAH in Houston, and on a secret people mover at the Capitol Building in DC. I’ve been doing research on this technology and I’m obsessed!!! I would love for you to do a video on this particular technology as it has huge benefits in reliability and cost effectiveness for cities. I’d love to speak with you about my love for them.

Congratulations! 🎉 Your kid is very lucky to have a smart and friendly dad like you! Fundamental flaw in the Corbusier vision is the artificial separation of uses and movement. It treats the different users like different species. You must never let Drivers know that they sometimes must be “demoted” to mere pedestrian. (Which is why parking lots never have sidewalks.) It reinforces separation of the social classes. In the end it’s futuristic segregation in spandex pants, plastic furniture, glass buildings and artificial smile. Epcot would only have worked as a wealthy satellite of a large city (as all new towns and garden cities are). As a city Epcot would have needed 10x more population density to pay for its overkill infrastructure (well said! 👍🏼). The people movers are useless, so “Space:1999.” Better would be a good bike network, including space for them on the “monorail.” But only marginals and originals walk or bike in that vision.

There is a peoplemover based off the Disney design at Chicago O'Hare Airport

There's two mass transit people movers in Florida, as it happens, one in Jacksonville and one in Miami. Those are more traditional monorail and APM systems, though.

There are some people mover systems in Italy. Those I know of are: - Pisa main station to the airport - Bologna main station to the airport - Perugia from the bus station outside the city into the city

I love the people mover idea, even if impractical. Never having to wait on a stop? Yes please.

While there are many examples of “People Movers” around the world (especially at airports), there exist very few examples of People Movers in the sense that Disney World has. These ones are specifically designed so that the vehicles are passive and only move because of linear induction motors on the track path and are driverless. People Movers in a general sense aren’t that. They have their own propulsion on board. Some of these are automated, some are not. WEDWay (Disney’s PeopleMover company) only built one of these systems outside of Disney at IAH in Houston. The only other example of a Linear Induction Motor People Mover I can think of is under the US Capitol building, but it was built by a different company.

Thank you for your videos

I know it was a year ago, but congratulations on your new baby. Love how you weave in urban planning history into vids. Ever read anything by Dr. Wayne K.D. Davies (retired U Calgary)? His ‘Communities Within Cities’ is good. Learned a lot of the urban planning history you link to from him.

With the PeopleMover system, the entire "track" does not move. Each car is moving freely on the rails, and is simply propelled forward by a propulsion system embedded into the track system between the rails, which is either spinning tires or linear induction motors. These motors are spaced periodically throughout the system, usually in groups, so if any one motor fails, the cars do not stop and can still continue forward, the other motors in the group pick up the slack. The KZfaqr Technology Connections has a good video talking about this.

Various people movers exist in airports though they are often more like highly frequent trains. There is however one system (and one system only!) that uses the exact same technology (passive cars) as the People Mover at Disney, and it's at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport. It's super interesting, because the cars themselves have no electronics at all. Technology Connections, a KZfaqr, made a 20 minute video about it.

That was a really great video, with some really great analysis. I'm surprised I haven't found it sooner. There are many videos about EPCOT on Disney Parks channels, but it's great to see one from a city planning point of view. I would love it if you could do a video with a very in depth analysis of EPCOT. That being said, I do disagree with your point toward the beginning of the video that keeping all of the houses stocked with the newest technologies would be impossible. Walt's plan was to have all of the leading Tech companies has R&D in EPCOT and they would test the products on the homes. Because of this, the homes would always have new tech.

Congratulations on the addition to your family😃

At 07:04, in fairness, Frank Lloyd Wright did also envision designing a mile-high building, Illinois Sky City… so he _was_ into density as well.

Singapore's 'Light Rail' consists of people moves connecting residential areas to mass transit, which seems pretty similar to what Disney's plan had.

Congrats on the new baby!!

The only case of the people mover being used outside of Disney land I'm aware of is bush intercontinental airport in houston

Congratulations on the new arrival!

Some of the driverless vision of downtown Fort Worth happened. Here's a video from the 80's showing the Tandy Center subway. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h92eprFluqe8YX0.html. The parking lot sat out on the floodplain of the Trinity River and people took the subway into the Tandy Center, a mall, that was raised above the ground and went over 3-5 city blocks.

I think the issue with everyone who tries to plan the "ideal" is that they see it as a fixed object. But cities are born, grow, thrive, and die - over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years. Can you imagine a planner in ancient Tenochtitlan being able to anticipate the needs of modern Mexico city? And they always seem to put hard boundaries at the edge of the city. I once attended lecture by Paolo Soleri about his Arcosanti design and specifically asked if he thought the boundary was realistic, wouldn't it constrain the city and prevent growth? His answer was, Yes, on both counts and that was necessary to protect the natural environment outside the city. I also had a discussion with Malcolm Wells, who thought the cure was to make everything earth covered (an idea I find appealing but...). The point I made to him was that we have to think of all modern cities as desert cities even if they're in the middle of a forest in the pacific northwest or the lake region of Minnesota because no city can exist on just the resources within it's boundaries. Water, electricity, food, fuel, and workers have to be brought in; while sewerage, garbage, and workers again have to be brought out. So the best metaphor for a city is the living cell with at most a membrane defining it's edge.

Vancouver uses an automated elevated rail network similar to a people mover.

Don't know if this has already been brought up but there is a people mover in Miami, Fl that's gotten quite popular but it's more or less a bus el rail hybrid.

This is the reason Walt was given control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. To build this city not the permanent World's Fair Disney built. Reedy Creek should have been dissolved in the next legislative session after EPCOT opened and it clearly wasn't a city.

The Reedy Creek Improvement District the self and immediate governing district for the Walt Disney World property is a legacy of the EPCOT city concept-Including the EPCOT Building Code.

What I still don't understand about EPCOT is that it's so huge and requires so much walking yet it has almost no transportation compared to Magic Kingdom. The People Mover seems like it was invented for EPCOT yet it makes no appearance there. There's no people mover, no train, no submarines, no boats (mostly), and the monorail only passes through and then stops outside the park. Walt Disney loved modes of transportation so it's odd that they added almost none of that when building his Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.

Congrats on your new baby!!!

Talk about the future and what people expected to see and why it did not happen

Congratulations for the baby!!! 😍

Though not exactly a Peoplemover, the PRT in Morgantown, WV shares a number of similarities!

Mid-century futurism is always the coolest.

congrats on the new baby!

Congratulations on you new child! Such exciting news.

Unless it has already been done, I would suggest you do a video about the design of the city of Adelaide, Australia. It is a very surprising city !

Detroit has something they call a "people mover"

The multilevel transport system reminded me of something I saw at a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit once: Leonardo's Principles for Creating the Perfect City- "1. Be next to a river for transportation, energy, hygiene, cultivation and drinking water. The city was to be crisscrossed by navigable canals. 2. Have wide roads with their widths in proportion to the height of the buildings on either side. 3. Create a sewerage system below ground level, such as the one in Siena. *4. Build roads at ground level* for heavy transport vehicles, workers, and commoners. *5. Develop elevated roads* for the use of the gentry, people on horses, emergency services, and small delivery carts. 6. Require that each house have its own sewerage system and be built on aesthetic and environmental principles with access at ground level. 7. Construct warehouses for storing all necessary goods away from the houses, also with access at ground level."

I'm not entirely a fan of Epcot's design, it may be futuristic and all, but I think the depictions of Gruens ideas on their own would work out much better. Epcot isn't something that could really be "alive" in my mind, it's a single design that when completed is meant to stay that way until the end of time. The images of Gruen's redesign of downtown Fort Worth looks like a place that allows for greater flexiblity is repurposing and expanding the city, while being comfortable to use on food the way European cities are. His freeform design allows you to construct a proper transportation network, be it a few subterranean roads, or railways. Epcot's center would be a collossal interchange in which almost all the residents and vistors would be funnelled through, and therefore quite crowded despite a very low density due to the suburbs. A freeform design would allow for many smaller interchanges with fewer people, much like large train/metro networks of major cities, which again builds into the expandability and potential for repurposing of areas. In addition, Gruen's work also appears to be more encouraging for denser zoning and a lower demand to have specifically high-income citizens for a tax base, and less infrastrucutre per citizen to maintain.

Thank you for putting something about dfw

A different version of the People Mover, made by the same company that produced Disney's, was installed at Houston Intercontinental Airport, it's located in the lower level tunnel that connects all 5 terminals and the Marriott in the center. While the air train that runs much faster and is overhead is used mostly, this was the original way to get between terminals. In addition to that, yet another spin off from that was installed under the US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. and travels from the senate office buildings to the capitol building. All 3 of these version use the same linear induction motors to move and brake as the ones at Disney World.

Idk about a people mover being used for mass transit, but there is one that's used at an airport in Texas that was built by Disney.

Miami uses a people mover system well we call it the Metromover but it’s really just to take people from different points in downtown to the Metrorail stations and brightline

Japan has a ton of mass-transit oriented people mover systems, including, but not limited to, two in Tokyo, one in Saitama, one in Yokohama, one in Osaka, and another in Kobe.

Theres another disney people mover I cant remember exactly where but I think at DFW international. Theres a KZfaq video on it you can check out.

Congrats!

My suburb (killara in Sydney) is a garden suburb with green belt. Nice place.

3:35 - "The cars themselves don't have motors, but instead the entire track moves." Actually, the cars use a unique system of linear induction motors imbedded at regular intervals along the track. It's really fascinating! Technology Connections did a great video on how the Disney People Movers work, and the sister People Movers that were installed in the Houston airport. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h5iRbLyn1Ji9qZs.html (He starts talking about the motors at 5:58 in the video.) "The propulsion system essentially has no moving parts."

Congratulations with the baby!!!

Crazy to think that Walt was able to design a better city than the average American planner of the 50s and 60s, really shows how sad the state of affairs was for this country in urban design.

I'm pretty sure theres an airport in Texas that has a people mover from Disney I remember seeing a video on it.

Had it been built the way Walt wanted you’d probably see most of it being abandoned today. Would have made a great KZfaq explore video.

Oh Epcot! Amazing Idea!!

4:51 where can I find that image Also where is the Epcot animated cartoons from?

2:25 where can we get that diagram and could you tell us more about it?

Congratulations on the baby!

I really enjoyed your video. In the first second, I thought not Disney again, but it is quite interesting. When do you want to make the next live stream?

It looks like he was also influenced with fractal geometry. Congrats on your new baby!

Congratulations, man! One thing I will never ask is why the good Lord has blessed you so.

Check out Morgantown, WV people mover!

Can you do a video on victor greun and his plans?

Howdy! The People Mover system has had one application outside of Disney parks. It's used in the George Bush Airport in Houston. While it's not mass transit per se, it does serve as a form of Airport Transit, which is just wierd enough to stick around in book. It's important to note that this is actually a WEDWay People Mover, not a competitor's system. This is actually a Disney People Mover. Here's a video on it by Technology Connections: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h5iRbLyn1Ji9qZs.html

Downtown Miami has a people mover. It’s 100% free and they never stop during hours of operation. No pilot. It’s all automated.

Midgar in FF7 is the nightmare version of this concept.

I think the Wedway people mover would work now because the vehicles can be autonomous and independent instead of being connected on one line

Detroit has something called a people mover, although I don't know what it is exactly, could just be a bus.

Woah EPCOT’s transport really reminds me of Singapore’s current transport plan for the future

My favourite cities are those that have little or no planning. And that are at least more than one person's vision.

9:09 Sorry if this is a dumb question but why exactly are trees on roofs an impractical idea? Assuming that you had means to do it without compromising the structural integrity of the building.

I highly reccomend checking out Old Spořilov

There are a lot of airports that use People Mover's.Including one that was built by Disney at the George Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas.

Boeing's helicopter division made a people mover for Morgantown, WV: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit