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Planned Communities: From Ecological Communes to Life in the Hands of Corporate Dictators

By Kate Sheppard

The housing preferences of the future are utopian cities: planned communities, where homebuyers can look forward to groomed, plotted developments instead of the spontaneously formed towns and cities of today. "Intentional communities," "planned unit developments" (PUDs), or the more pretentious "smart communities" are becoming more and more popular, appearing in Ithaca and nearly every state between Washington and Florida.

Homes in planned communities can range from low hundred-thousand dollar multiple-unit buildings to multi-million dollar manors, depending on the location and target buyers for each community. But for the most part, homes in planned-developments cost an average of $300,000 and target the elite of America.

"These communities have become a perceived place of order and coherence in their lives that have been empty and devoid of connection," said Andrew Wood, a professor of communication studies at San Jose State, and author of four essays on the Disney-owned planned community of Celebration, Florida.

The Elitist's Sanctuary

In these planned communities, upper class citizens find a contrast in comparison to the ugliness of modern society, Wood said. Here homeowners can find a sanctimonious community far removed from the muddle and jumble of everyday American life.

"They're not just buying a home," Wood said. "They're really buying a lifestyle."

Lyle Blair, a retiree from South Carolina, is developing a planned community of earth-toned homes in Lafontaine, Ontario, where he recently bought a house. Blair called the surrounding area a "hodgepodge development" and "a terrible waste of wonderful land" in a September 2002 Toronto Star interview, conveying the sentiments of many homeowners moving to these homogenous, tidy planned towns.

These planned communities are often attempts by developers and builders to cater to the desires of "new urbanists," who seek a return to the "hot dogs and apple pie" towns if yesteryear.

Many of these corporate-owned planned communities are designed to facilitate neighbor interaction, going so far as building porches close enough that neighbors can talk and outlawing fences.

"Nostalgia invites us to ignore our current experience," Wood wrote in his essay "Playing with Space," the second of his four essays on Celebration, Florida, a planned community owned and operated by the Disney Corporation.

Like many intentional communities, Celebration markets itself as down-home, imploring post-modern Americans to seek refuge among its streets. It accepted its first residents in June 1996 and has even gone so far as to "age" the homes and storefronts, modeling the town after Disneyland's Main Street, USA.

"They're invoking a past experience of culture," Wood said. "The concern I have is that this is a self-selected community, performing this interaction for each other--a shared fantasy."

"CELEBRATION is a community built on a foundation of cornerstones: Community, Education, Health, Technology, and a Sense of Place," the town's public relations representatives beam from the town's website (www.celebrationfl.com). And yes, the website capitalizes the entire word on every reference.

But many planned communities, especially Celebration, appeal to a narrow range of Americans, Wood said, mirroring 1930s Jim Crow-era segregation housing. Here, you are never confronted with people who don't look like you, who don't dress like you, who don't talk like you.

"It's self-imposed ethnic cleansing," Wood said.

At the initial housing lottery in Celebration, journalists could only find one African American couple looking to buy there-employees of the Disney Corporation.

Walt Disney first dreamed of a community like Celebration in the 1960s as he and his team of "imaginers" cooked up the EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) that visitors can see in Orlando's Disneyworld, first designed as a home to company employees.

In his essay "Main Street USA: The Public Sphere," Mark Dery refers to Walt's response to a journalist's inquiries about his political ambitions: "I'd rather be benevolent dictator of Disney enterprises"

And in accordance with Walt's vision, the people of Celebration are subject to the governance of the Disney Corporation for 40 years, or until the town reaches 75 percent of the projected 20,000 maximum residents.

"Corporate citizenship in CELEBRATION means joining one of the most promising new towns in America, designed to integrate the best ideas of the past with the best technology for the future, a place where companies put down roots and employees plant their family trees," the site declares.

Corporate Monopolies

This "corporate citizenship" is a literal reality in many of these planned communities, where private corporate investors feed money into the neighborhoods in hopes of a swift and profitable return.

HomeStreet Bank financed $15.5 million for 120 residential units in Issaquah, Washington last November. The bank, one of the largest private banks in the Northwest, is paying for the first homes costing $160,000 and over in the Port Blakely Issaquah Highlands Master Planned Community, construction of which is set to begin early this year. Eventually, this community that writers and realtors have called an "urban oasis" will comprise 3,250 homes, 450,000 square feet of stores, and 3.4 million square acres of office space, Business Wire reported in November 2002.

In-Stat Research has projected that 850,000 planned community homes will be built by 2006, and will reap $70 million in revenue, Communications Engineering and Design magazine reported in September 2002.

The magazine also reported that broadband connections are a chief concern for homebuyers in planned communities, prompting broadband providers to compete for contracts with builders and developers. Thus, developers can assure buyers that they will have access to high-speed Internet, phones and networks long before the homes are even built.

Eagle Broadband of Houston, Texas, plunked down $26 million for seven communities, and contracted with homeowners and developers to be the sole service provider. Eagle CEO H. Dean Cubley told CED magazine that Eagles plans to recoup losses on the investment in less than four months.

Ecologically Friendly Communal Living

Planned communities can often have a more inclusive vision of utopia, as seen in non-corporate, non-elitist "intentional" co-housing communities like Ithaca's own EcoVillage, where land is not corporate but community owned. Here, community residents buy into a shared community, dedicated to ecological and social sustainability, organic agriculture, education, and maintenance of 80 percent green space.

Valorie Rockney, a lecturer in the Ithaca College writing department, is scheduled is scheduled to move into her EcoVillage home when it is completed in June. Rockney's home will run largely on power from photovoltaic cells, and on dark days will draw power from the community's power grid. On especially sunny days, the house will provide power to the grid. Homes in the community also share high-speed Internet connections and other technological perks, much like other planned communities.

EcoVillage Co-housing Cooperative completed its first neighborhood in 1997 and is currently home to 60 adults and 30 children, as well as animals. Here residents share three community dinners each week in a common house, take part in consensus decision making, and host occasional barn-raising parties as new homes are constructed.

The first co-housing project like EcoVillage began in Denmark in the late 1960s, starting a trend that spread to America in the 1980s. More than 100 communities like EV now exist across the country, growing in size and popularity every day as more Americans look for communities that suit their lifestyle decisions.

"I wanted to live a more environmentally sound life, and I wanted to be part of a community," Rockney said. "To me it's just a good opportunity to combine some of the qualities of an old-fashioned community with new technology."

Kate Sheppard is a freshman journalism major. Email her at geekgirlKS@aol.com