Have you ever heard of Celebration, Florida?
Celebration is a "community", as the town website puts it, 20 minutes west of Orlando International Airport, home to about 9,000 residents, and founded by Disney.
I only recently became aware of the Disney town after reading Kevin Shortsleeve's "The Wonderful World of the Depression: Disney, Despotism, and the 1930s. Or, Why Disney Scares Us." Shortsleeve's piece focuses on showing how Disney is, quite frankly, obsessed with the 1930s, but he mentions the town of Celebration. According to Shortsleeve, Disney created the town Celebration as a means of extending Disney World. He explains that Disney could only avoid certain environmental regulations if a residential community existed within the park, and so Celebration was created.
I think it might be fun to live in a Disney town. The town website implies that it is a tight knit community with frequent family-frienly events for residents. The only catch: residents don't have total control over their government. Shortsleeve points out that Disney couldn't allow Celebration residents to have power to vote on things that affected the park, so residents had to sign a contract with a hidden clause stating that while Disney's real estate firm owns land in the town, it has "veto power over any changes in governance."
Interested in learning more? Check out these resources:
Celebration website: http://www.celebration.fl.us/
Kevin Shortsleeve's piece: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v028/28.1shortsleeve.html
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