Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. It could happen here with me Andrew
Speaker 1: of the YouTube channel andrewism and today I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Miya and care Hello. Hello, Hello, Hello, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk about cities because I very recently published a
Speaker 1: video on Sula Punk City Planet. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know why you're all gonna hear this podcast, but I
Speaker 1: did recently publish it, and you can check that out
Speaker 1: of my channel. And I thought i'd share a bit
Speaker 1: about a bit more about one particular historical urban planet
Speaker 1: movement that I talk about in that video, and that
Speaker 1: is Ebanez A. Howard's Garden Cities movement and his book
Speaker 1: Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Are all familiar with either, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, so Ebane's A Howard. Side note,
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't know who looks at a
Speaker 1: child and names them Abnez A. Howard, But he presented
Speaker 1: this idea of the garden city concept in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight in a book called Tomorrow, A Peaceful Path through
Speaker 1: Real Reform. Later he republished in nineteen or two under
Speaker 1: the name of Garden Cities or Tomorrow, and take notes
Speaker 1: in the title of the book of the use of
Speaker 1: reform and peaceful path because it does highlight a noticeable
Speaker 1: lack within Howard's vision that will discuss later. He wants
Speaker 1: to provide access to the benefits of both town living
Speaker 1: and a country living. As he describes, a town and
Speaker 1: country are like magnets drawing people to them, you know. So,
Speaker 1: According to him, town offers vibrant society and opportunity and transportation,
Speaker 1: but it lacks the beauty of nature. It has pollution,
Speaker 1: and has crowded, it has disease. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: Victoria and era cities. He's talking about place with stink
Speaker 1: um in contrast, and the country and country offers the
Speaker 1: space and the beauty of nature and it's abundance, but
Speaker 1: it lacks society and it can feel isolated, and it
Speaker 1: really spread out. So you wanted to create a hybrid
Speaker 1: of both concepts, a third magnet of town country, the
Speaker 1: combined the benefits of both. I believe the secret. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I have to. I have to jump in here and
Speaker 1: make a secret, secret third thing. Yes, yes, thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that country, but a secret third thing. We fulfilled our
Speaker 1: We fulfilled our contractual obligations. One joke, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: got a side optical, Andrew, you take it from here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a secret third thing, how I would believe
Speaker 1: that the ideal living conditions for people of all economic
Speaker 1: backgrounds could be created by establishing these town country cities
Speaker 1: with very specific parameters, run by strong government institutions. And
Speaker 1: Ebenezer Howard's context. Again, no offense to the ebenez As
Speaker 1: the world. But jeez, I can't. I can't let go
Speaker 1: of those amplications. I think I think we need to
Speaker 1: bring back the name Ebenezer. Actually it's it's it's been
Speaker 1: too long since I've seen an infant named Ebenezer, meaning
Speaker 1: I've never seen one. I think I feel like we
Speaker 1: should see more. Just absolutely absurd. All the timing names.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you call the baby? Do
Speaker 1: you call them ebby or something like? How do you
Speaker 1: call the baby Ebenezer? The baby's name? Why would you
Speaker 1: you call it the baby's name? You could call it Nieza.
Speaker 1: You could eventually call it Weezaks, horrible nickname. That is awful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that is okay. I'm here on the amplications.
Speaker 1: I do never I never want to hear that again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I digress Howard's writing. I'm just gonna call them. Howard
Speaker 1: Howard's Rights in Journey Revolution was in response to well
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution, response to the urban slums, the pollution,
Speaker 1: the lack of access to the countryside, and much of
Speaker 1: his book is dedicated the idea that cities as they
Speaker 1: existed in his time were not sustainable in the long run.
Speaker 1: By the middle of the nineteenth century, over half of
Speaker 1: Britain's population lived in towns, and in nineteen hundred that
Speaker 1: proportion had a resun to over three quarters. But English
Speaker 1: towns and cities presented social environmental problems of an unprecedented scale,
Speaker 1: and much of Britain's history in that period could be
Speaker 1: connected with the efforts to ameliorate the frightening conditions that
Speaker 1: a lot of people lived in. When it comes to
Speaker 1: the design, Howard wanted to create these highly structured, carefully
Speaker 1: laid out communities to provide the best conditions possible for
Speaker 1: every kind of person he saw. He wanted to put
Speaker 1: just like large areas of land from aristocratic owners as
Speaker 1: a setting up garden cities that would house up to
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand people in individual homes on six thousand acres.
Speaker 1: And that whole vision of individual homes is I think
Speaker 1: it belies a limitation the imagination there, but it's it's
Speaker 1: someone understandable considering the historical conditions at the time, where
Speaker 1: people were living in these overcrowded slums and stuff, and
Speaker 1: the dream was really to have a home of your
Speaker 1: own that you didn't have to crowd out. It didn't
Speaker 1: be crowded, you couldn't have to share with others. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think a sustainable city should trade the sprawl that
Speaker 1: single family homes generate for more dense development. For the
Speaker 1: most part, that is, but I digress once again. That's
Speaker 1: not all his plan entailed. His garden cities would also
Speaker 1: include a huge public garden with public buildings like a
Speaker 1: town hall, lecture halls, theaters, and a hospitepital, an enormous
Speaker 1: arcade called the Crystal Palace not arcadies in video game,
Speaker 1: where residents would browse covered market and enjoy a winter garden,
Speaker 1: neighborhoods with cooperative kitchens and shared gardens, schools, playgrounds and churches, factories, warehouses, farms, workshops,
Speaker 1: and access to a train line. In its ideal form,
Speaker 1: the garden city to become a network of smaller garden
Speaker 1: cities built around the larger central town. The idealized vision
Speaker 1: of the garden city contained very specific utopian elements, like
Speaker 1: small communities planned on a concentric pattern that an accommodated
Speaker 1: housing industry and agriculture surrounded by green belts that would
Speaker 1: limit their growth. Now, there's a diagram that he did
Speaker 1: up for his book that has been popularized that represents
Speaker 1: like a sort of a concentric circle design. But he
Speaker 1: didn't believe that that necessarily had to be the shape
Speaker 1: of the garden city. He still wanted the city to
Speaker 1: be adapted to the local layout somewhat. And these elements
Speaker 1: of garden city design were all into dependent you know.
Speaker 1: He wanted strong community engagement, he wanted community ownership of land.
Speaker 1: Although he wasn't a socialist, mind you. He was a Georgeist.
Speaker 1: Oh god, wait, that explains it. That explains so much
Speaker 1: about all of his politics. Of course, he was a Georgist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quite an interesting crew of characters. He wanted mixed ten
Speaker 1: year homes and homes in types that were generally affordable.
Speaker 1: You know, to go on another digression, I find georgis
Speaker 1: Owe to be such an interesting fixation of a philosophy.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, looking all the problems in society,
Speaker 1: and you know what, we need a land tax. That'll
Speaker 1: salt thing. I mean, obviously that's not all it is,
Speaker 1: to the to the that political philosophy, that economic approach.
Speaker 1: But I just found I just find it every time
Speaker 1: I think about it. I find it funny that it
Speaker 1: was just really like the whole movement was basically this
Speaker 1: one like um tax proposal. It's really that was the
Speaker 1: whole focus of it. Yeah, it's really funny too, because
Speaker 1: I mean it has one of the sort of largest
Speaker 1: like collapses of any ideology ever. Like it is like
Speaker 1: it was just a very like very it was. It
Speaker 1: was a big It was a big ideology. You know,
Speaker 1: it literally helped to develop the game, the board game
Speaker 1: and plea, you know what. It's like, it was a
Speaker 1: huge thing. This is something I've actually been looking into
Speaker 1: a lot. But I've been trying to track down some
Speaker 1: of the original like nineteen twenties copies of Monopoly that's
Speaker 1: more based on the second game. Yes, I've been trying
Speaker 1: to find the ones that were like pre pre pre
Speaker 1: Parker Brothers um and I've I've I found I found
Speaker 1: a few, a few, I found a few like two
Speaker 1: months ago, but before I could order them, it was
Speaker 1: sold to somebody else on eBay. So I've been trying
Speaker 1: to track down another another one in the UH in
Speaker 1: the past few months, and it's been a bit more challenging,
Speaker 1: just because I'm kind of a monopoly freak. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: um it's really interesting to see how um that game
Speaker 1: was developed and then changed over time, and how Hasbur
Speaker 1: was stepped in? Isn't Hosbur Poker Brothers without was stepped in?
Speaker 1: And did there do to kind of basically rewrote the
Speaker 1: history of the board game entirely. Yeah, but anyway. Elements
Speaker 1: to the Garden City strong community engagement, communitytionship with land,
Speaker 1: mixed tenure homes, homes in type so generally affordable, a
Speaker 1: wide range of local jobs with easy commuting distances of homes,
Speaker 1: well designed homes with gardens combining the best of town
Speaker 1: and country, and green infrastructure that enhances a natural environment,
Speaker 1: with strong cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in addition to
Speaker 1: integrated and accessible transportation. It's not all sunshine and roses, though,
Speaker 1: I Mean you could look at the sort of the
Speaker 1: cream washing elements of the Garden City design and even
Speaker 1: in the time they were criticized. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: praised for being an alternative to the overcrowed industrial cities,
Speaker 1: but they were also criticized for damage in the economy,
Speaker 1: being destructive to the beauty of nature, and being inconvenient.
Speaker 1: You know, they weren't able to be Furthermore, because they
Speaker 1: had this sort of top down design philosophy, they weren't
Speaker 1: able to truly reflect the natural and organic developments of
Speaker 1: a town or a country, you know, so secretly thing
Speaker 1: couldn't do either other things that the original two stuff
Speaker 1: could do. And then of course you have the mustached
Speaker 1: man himself, Marie Bucchin, stepping in in the limits of
Speaker 1: the city to evicerate the idea of the garden city.
Speaker 1: He talks about how Howard's scheme was basically a system
Speaker 1: of benevolent capitalism that presumed to avoid the extremes of
Speaker 1: communism and individualism, and as a result, his entire book
Speaker 1: was quote permeated by an underlying assumption. So typically British
Speaker 1: that are compromise going to be struck between an intrinsically
Speaker 1: irrational material reality and a moral ideology of high minded conciliation.
Speaker 1: Microst Yeah, I feel like the most brutal part of
Speaker 1: that is just the typically British. Yeah, I mean anything learning.
Speaker 1: Look at really the plan that Howard had, you know,
Speaker 1: the offices and industrial factories and shopping centers that he
Speaker 1: intended to provide the garden city with. Those spaces are
Speaker 1: battlegrounds of conflicting social interests. You know, there's alienated labor,
Speaker 1: their income differences, their disparities of work time and free time.
Speaker 1: All all that conflict is not addressed just because you
Speaker 1: make a pretty city. You know, there's no resolution to
Speaker 1: the problems created under a capitalist factory office or shopping
Speaker 1: center just because you have a nice transit system and
Speaker 1: a green belt. I feel like some of some of
Speaker 1: these same problems to crop up on some of the
Speaker 1: solar punk stuff online as well. I mean we've an
Speaker 1: attacked him definitely greenwashing throughout the solar punk aesthetic and stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it is it is an interesting,
Speaker 1: an interesting, interesting aspect that keeps propping up, and it's
Speaker 1: just intriguing that it like dates back over a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, like this same exact thing. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: funny enough, you know, his garden cities we even fallen
Speaker 1: short of utopias that were thought of before his time,
Speaker 1: you know, like not even just utopias, but also actual
Speaker 1: historical political experiments that you try to address various social problems,
Speaker 1: you know, Like unlike the Greek polis, which had some
Speaker 1: basis of face to face democracy, Howard just had a
Speaker 1: central council and a department structure based on elections. Unlike
Speaker 1: in Thomas Moore's utopia, there's no proposal for rotating agricultural
Speaker 1: and industrial work. Unlike the Paris Commune of eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: which was established long before Howard wrote his book, he
Speaker 1: had no sort of incorporation of that sort of political
Speaker 1: experimentation in the Garden city development. The criticism really is
Speaker 1: how superficial a lot of howards ideas are, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there was just a lack of social analysis analysis in
Speaker 1: favor of just design. Yeah, Georgism, Like sure it would
Speaker 1: probably be like better than what we have now. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it by no means like fixes all of
Speaker 1: the systemic issue. It's like Amsterdam, right, I would rather
Speaker 1: have capitalism while riding a bike. But Bokchin also talks
Speaker 1: about how these communities not encompass the full range of
Speaker 1: possibilities a human experience again quote because you know Bukchen
Speaker 1: is Loki a boss. Right. Neighborliness is mistaken for organic
Speaker 1: social intercourse and mutual aid. Well manicured parks for the
Speaker 1: harmonization of humanity with Nietzsche. The proximity of workplaces for
Speaker 1: the development of a new meaning for work and its
Speaker 1: integrasement play, an eclectic mix of ranch houses, slab like apartments,
Speaker 1: and bachelor type flats for spontaneous architectural variety, shopping mark
Speaker 1: plazas in a vast expanse of lawn for the agora,
Speaker 1: lecture halls for cultural centers, hobby classes for vocational variety,
Speaker 1: benevolent trusts, so municipal councils for self administration. One can
Speaker 1: add endlessly to this list of misplaced criteria for community
Speaker 1: that saved to offer skate rather than clarify the high
Speaker 1: attainment of the urban tradition. Indeed, the appearance of community
Speaker 1: serves the ideological function of concealing the incompleteness of an
Speaker 1: intimate and shared social life. Again boom, you know, and
Speaker 1: people are brought together. You know, they have all these
Speaker 1: conveniences in these pleasant trees, but they're still culturally impoverished,
Speaker 1: they're still atomized, they still deal this stark reality of
Speaker 1: capitalism in the spaces that they're they're gonna inevitably spend
Speaker 1: most of their day at work. Like it's nice that
Speaker 1: the city is well designed, but how much of it
Speaker 1: are you going to get to see if you still
Speaker 1: have to go to work for eight hours plus a d.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, at least you know, the commune
Speaker 1: will probably be shure to But that's about it, and
Speaker 1: that's me if you get a job in the city itself.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because in some ways, the invention of
Speaker 1: the suburb in the in the years after this kind
Speaker 1: of tried to solve for this issue while also just
Speaker 1: doing it in an incredibly racist way. Like you can
Speaker 1: you can you can see the invention of the suburb
Speaker 1: of trying to create these little nestled communities but also
Speaker 1: getting away from the the the urban center, which was
Speaker 1: seen as this like scary place full of people who
Speaker 1: were non white. So you have like this white flight
Speaker 1: thing that developed this notion of the suburbs, which in
Speaker 1: some ways kind of does this but in a in
Speaker 1: a much worse way. Actually, it makes it makes the
Speaker 1: idea of the Garden City look like a much better
Speaker 1: alternative to what the suburbs did. And it's it's just
Speaker 1: interesting that even the version of this that got implemented
Speaker 1: was just done in a way that it's so much
Speaker 1: more dystopian and depressing. Yeah, I mean, and Bookchin addresses
Speaker 1: that that comparison to the suburbs as well. Right, he said,
Speaker 1: in the best of cases, the new towns differ from
Speaker 1: suburbs primarily because job commuting is short and most services
Speaker 1: can be supplied within the community itself. In the worst
Speaker 1: of cases, they are essentially bedroom suburbs of the metropolis
Speaker 1: and add enormously to its congestion during wook and hours.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't believe Bookchin beat me to the
Speaker 1: punch on this one. I'm devastated. This is the first
Speaker 1: time booctions ever has has ever has ever beaten me.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is truly terrible. So but
Speaker 1: despite some of these flaws and criticisms, how it was
Speaker 1: passionate about his idea, all right, I mean, he published
Speaker 1: the book. He also organized like he's actually he's not
Speaker 1: sitting on Twitter, right, He's actually doing something about his ideas.
Speaker 1: So he organized this Garden City Association in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine in England to promote the ideas of social justice,
Speaker 1: economic efficiency, beautification, health and well being in the context
Speaker 1: of City Planet. That Garden City Association later became the
Speaker 1: Town and Country Plan and Association, which still exists to
Speaker 1: this day. Women played a very active role and continue
Speaker 1: to play very active role in the organization. I mean,
Speaker 1: as Howard says himself in his book, women's influence is
Speaker 1: too often ignored here that ladies, this guy's a feminist.
Speaker 1: But when the garden city is built as a chokey
Speaker 1: will be woman's share. And the work he found to
Speaker 1: have been a large one. Women are among our most
Speaker 1: active missionaries. And so he's doing some Abdullah shit now
Speaker 1: that yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's liberating life, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah. The TCP in the Town Country Planet Association
Speaker 1: has continued to campaign for a new generation of garden
Speaker 1: cities based on modern modern garden city principles. They will
Speaker 1: cross sector and government influence policy in legislation. There is
Speaker 1: awareness through guidance and training. They promote affordable homes and inclusive,
Speaker 1: healthy and climate resilient places, and they try to create
Speaker 1: text world barriers opportunities and practical solutions necessary to make
Speaker 1: new garden cities a reality. They also are genuinely interested
Speaker 1: in empowering people to have a real influence over decisions
Speaker 1: about the environments and to secure social justice within in
Speaker 1: between communities, or at least that is what their website says.
Speaker 1: Outside of the TCPA, the idea of goden City definitely
Speaker 1: sort of rooted itself in urban planning and the urban
Speaker 1: planning tradition, and it did sort of feed into this
Speaker 1: rise of green spaces within urban landscapes that we now
Speaker 1: find around the world. The concept of the garden city
Speaker 1: is definitely still revisited today, but it's considerably different from
Speaker 1: the origin idea. It's also taken the garden city as
Speaker 1: an inspiration as an esthetic inspiration to create greater integration
Speaker 1: between urban areas and green spaces in a time though,
Speaker 1: going back to the late nineteenth early twentieth century, Howard
Speaker 1: was a successful fundraise again he was trying to get
Speaker 1: things going in the first years of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: He built two garden cities, Letchworth Garden City and Wellwyn
Speaker 1: Garden City, both in Hertfordshire, England, and both still exist today.
Speaker 1: Let's ruth was originally quite successful. It was first you know,
Speaker 1: an ancient parish from like the eleventh century and remained
Speaker 1: a small rural village. And so the start of twentieth
Speaker 1: century when the land was purchased by a company called
Speaker 1: First Garden City Limited, which was founded by Howard and supporters,
Speaker 1: and they went on to establish the United Kingdom's first
Speaker 1: roundabout the Solar Shot Circus, a lot of urban like
Speaker 1: park land and open spaces, including a green space named
Speaker 1: after Howard called Howard Park. But after Howard's passing, the
Speaker 1: First Garden City Limited was sort of taken over in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and the company so it changed how the
Speaker 1: town was managed. The residents of the local council kind
Speaker 1: of lost some say the original Goden City ideals were reduced,
Speaker 1: and the corporation eventually became for the first the company
Speaker 1: created a cooperation transferred ownership to the corporation which was
Speaker 1: now called Letchworth Garden City Cooperation, and then that cooperation
Speaker 1: was replaced by a charter will body in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties called Letchworth god City Heritage Foundation, which continues to
Speaker 1: own and manage the estate to this day. Leachworth was
Speaker 1: a sort of an interesting experiment. The people who were founded,
Speaker 1: who helped to found that town, were very much otherworldly
Speaker 1: as some people would described them. They for example, they
Speaker 1: had some people describe them as health freaks. They actually
Speaker 1: voted on a ban to set against the selling of alcohol,
Speaker 1: a ban on the selling of alcohol in public premises?
Speaker 1: Oh boy, so which is I mean for a British village,
Speaker 1: right in the early nineteen hundreds to vote against having
Speaker 1: a pub? Unheard of? Right? They did eventually create a pub.
Speaker 1: That pub didn't serve any alcohol. Bumber bumber, hate to
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, but lat truth was still like a
Speaker 1: real pioneer, you know. It's approached to blend in Tallent
Speaker 1: country was used in the Australian capital Canberra, in hell Rao,
Speaker 1: in Germany, in Tapanila and Finland, and in Messa Parks
Speaker 1: and that field, and of course in the other garden
Speaker 1: city well win. How what had arranged for that land
Speaker 1: to be purchased by a company called Second Gotain City Limited.
Speaker 1: Real creative there, And of first they were going to
Speaker 1: call the city digs Well, but a couple of days
Speaker 1: later they changed their mind, probably because they realized as
Speaker 1: a dumb name, and then they decided to call Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna say anything, but yeah, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not a great name. Yeah. And so the town is
Speaker 1: laid out along these tree line boulevards. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a New George and Town Center. Um. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of grass out of parks, as to be expected. And
Speaker 1: the planners had intended to create the Guarden City to
Speaker 1: have like one shop called Welwyn Stores, which was basically
Speaker 1: a monopoly that all the residents were expected to shop at. Lastly,
Speaker 1: I think I want to bring up one final inspiration.
Speaker 1: I was about to one on whether I would include
Speaker 1: this one or not, but I said, you know what
Speaker 1: I might be entertaining and I might want to talk
Speaker 1: about it further in the future. A certain character by
Speaker 1: the name of Walt Disney. Oh no, this is Epcot.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is the extramental prototypical City
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow. Yes, no, this is the Florida Project. Oh no,
Speaker 1: Disney's Epcot was designed in concentric circles with radiats. This
Speaker 1: is the worst job scare. Oh, but it should be noted,
Speaker 1: or rather should be expected that, unlike Howard, mister Disney
Speaker 1: envisioned having a lot of personal control over the day
Speaker 1: to day management of life in his city. So really,
Speaker 1: Epcot was only loosely inspired by Howard's idea of combining
Speaker 1: the populace with industry. Um, this city would have had
Speaker 1: a hotel at the center with more than thirty stories
Speaker 1: and a convention center. There would be an internationally themed
Speaker 1: town center. Um, there would be a mega mole. There
Speaker 1: would be themed restaurants, shops, and attractions. There would be
Speaker 1: a monorail. Yeah he was, he was a car free
Speaker 1: community advocate of Disney. Yeah. Like his plan was that
Speaker 1: nobody would drive in Epcot. Delivery trucks and other autobiles
Speaker 1: and other automobiles that needed to enter the city were
Speaker 1: to be kept underground. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: fusion of Ebone's ah what an elon musk that sucks?
Speaker 1: That sucks. Yeah. Also, this city would be climb a
Speaker 1: controlled with a glass roof. Yes, I mean, And it's
Speaker 1: funny because like he couldn't even do this properly, Like
Speaker 1: he couldn't even build this. Instead, instead they got turned
Speaker 1: into like a like a like a bare skeleton of
Speaker 1: his original plan. Was because Epcot will failed in so
Speaker 1: in so many ways, the reason being that he ended
Speaker 1: up dying right. Yeah, yes, Like even on his deathbed,
Speaker 1: he was still sketching up designs for epcots, so he
Speaker 1: never really got to implement it. Pro life Dictator dies anyways. Yeah, actual,
Speaker 1: like the actual like living communities in in Disney World
Speaker 1: Florida are are so different and in many ways they're
Speaker 1: They're just like another suburb, um, except you're in a
Speaker 1: suburb owned by Disney. Yeah yeah, And I mean it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a peek into what life would have been
Speaker 1: like on the epcot. Right, your home would have been
Speaker 1: pre fabricated and modula certain materials and technologies could be
Speaker 1: tested as soon as they were viable. By the way,
Speaker 1: why they have nothing against free fab homes. I think
Speaker 1: they could be very useful, um, But Disney's idea was basically,
Speaker 1: your home is pre fab so that any time he
Speaker 1: wanted to install an update on it, he could. It's great,
Speaker 1: you know, like the entire city was basically like a
Speaker 1: guinea pig for any technologies he came up with. UM,
Speaker 1: and so he wants to really retain absolute control of
Speaker 1: the city, Like they wouldn't even own anything Disney alone
Speaker 1: would own the land so that he and his successes
Speaker 1: can make updates and changes without ever being snowed down
Speaker 1: by this pesky thing called citizens votes and rights and
Speaker 1: all that. It's funny because this is actually now under
Speaker 1: attack by Ron de Santis in Florida. The sovereignty of
Speaker 1: Disney may like change a lot, and I think already
Speaker 1: stripped it. Yes, but but how this plays out in
Speaker 1: actuality is yet to be determined. But it is funny
Speaker 1: that this is actually like this is a very very
Speaker 1: recent thing, Like it's just like a week or so.
Speaker 1: But see what we can see here is one of
Speaker 1: the inevitable transitions as as as we as we saw
Speaker 1: in British colonial rule in India, which is that direct
Speaker 1: corporate rules always replaced by injurrect corporate rule via the state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, it's in some ways we will probably
Speaker 1: learn that it was better to live under Disney than
Speaker 1: run Descantis. But that's not saying much. Next time he
Speaker 1: opens up a discentist would No, no, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just it's literally just like eighteen Giitmo exhibitions. Oh lord,
Speaker 1: I mean, descentist world will just be the United States
Speaker 1: when descents poidential election. True, sad but true. But let
Speaker 1: me tell you a bit more about Epcot. Right, if
Speaker 1: you were eighteen, you know older, you have to have
Speaker 1: a job. Well, so you don't get to retire. Nobody's
Speaker 1: allowed to retire. You only get to stop working if
Speaker 1: you either die or leave amazing one way out. Also,
Speaker 1: and the reason being, he believed this would prevent slums
Speaker 1: or ghettos from foremen in any part of his magical city,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if everyone has a job, then nobody
Speaker 1: will be struggling to pay rent or eat. Right. Funnily enough,
Speaker 1: of course, a lot of Disney workers today can't afford
Speaker 1: to pay rent or eat. But hey, the theoretically everybody
Speaker 1: in Epcot would have their basic needs met. Also, though
Speaker 1: in exchange for that, they wouldn't have any privacy because
Speaker 1: Epcott was also supposed to be like a tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: You know, you look outside you were new, and tourists
Speaker 1: are like looking inside you were new. That was a
Speaker 1: thing that was Epcot thankfully doesn't it wasn't fully implemented.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people have said that Singapore is like
Speaker 1: a dystopian city state run by Disney. But we could
Speaker 1: talk about that him at the time. That's the basic
Speaker 1: rundown on garden cities, past, present, and future. The idea
Speaker 1: of it, I think was, you know, notable, admirable, good effort,
Speaker 1: but flowed um and because it lacks a strong ideological
Speaker 1: foundation and economic foundation and analysis that took into a
Speaker 1: county contentions speak within society that you know, manifests in
Speaker 1: the urban landscape. And I think it's a clear warning
Speaker 1: that for solo punks and for really people who are
Speaker 1: interested in urban planet as a whole, that you know,
Speaker 1: aesthetics is not everything. Design is not everything. You know,
Speaker 1: they asked me some some meat to those um, let's
Speaker 1: say some meats underneath that flesh. It's a really weird analogy,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, no, but like yeah, the principle of Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna abandon the Walter
Speaker 1: Benjamin thing I was gonna do there, but no, try it,
Speaker 1: keep keep going, keep We're gonna Benjamin thing I have
Speaker 1: I have. I haven't actually read any of his stuff
Speaker 1: in like five years, but one of Benjamin's things was
Speaker 1: when politics is sort of displaced, you're converted into esthetic,
Speaker 1: it becomes fascism. So don't do that. In fact, have
Speaker 1: actual politics and not simply reduce your politics too an
Speaker 1: aesthetic or to aesthetics, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, true, true.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's it for me. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on YouTube dot com slash Andreism, on Twitter at
Speaker 1: er School of Saying True, and on picture dotcom slash Andreism.
Speaker 1: You can find us at happen here pod or cools
Speaker 1: on Media on Twitter and Instagram. Um, and you can
Speaker 1: find me tweeting about my desire to understand the mechanics
Speaker 1: of how Disney World operates at Hungry Boutie, mostly on Twitter. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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