It was 85 degrees this Christmas Eve, when I first visited The Walt Disney World Company's newest creation, Celebration, Florida. Somehow holly berry and pine needle decorations don't really put me in the holiday spirit when I have to sweat to see them. Of course, Disney doesn't control the sun (at least, not that I know of), but being surrounded by white, veiny tourist legs squeezing out of tacky Bermuda shorts only added to my negative feelings about this town.

By now, anyone living in Central Florida should have heard of what I was convinced was phase one hundred in Disney's plan for world domination - the town of Celebration. In case you don't know, it's Disney's estimated $2.5 billion project on approximately 4,900 acres in northwest Osceola County which will include up to 8,000 residences, a school, a health campus, and commercial, recreational, and retail facilities.

Driving down the hell that is U.S. Highway 192 is not my idea of grand entrance to any community, nor is the landmark water tower that signals Celebration Avenue. I'm all for organization, but the signs directing me Downtown were a little too reminiscent of that other Disney property not so far away. But more than the street signs, I couldn't get over the architecture and the urban planning that looked more suited to Main Street, U.S.A. than any place where people would actually live. They even have those name plates next to every door, like they do in the parks' signs that read, "Electrical Room" in a uniform type with Braille at the bottom. -- from "New Urbanism: Cause for Celebration?" by Brandy Davis

I found the article above among the (typically ascerbic) comments posted beneath a Jon Katz article on Celebration, Florida, at Slashdot.org a few months back. (Katz works a tough crowd. I don't envy him.) Both articles went into my "fodder" file because I felt they related, if only indirectly, to some of the concerns I have about our Information Age and how we choose to live our lives. Like lots of the items in the fodder file, I never knew if I would be inclined to use those bits of flotsam or not. They were only there to feed my ruminative process.

So I asked myself if I *could possibly* live in a "planned" or "new urban" community..

Any number of people would immediately respond to that question about my lifestyle, "No way!"

There's ample evidence to reach such a conclusion. I have been urban for almost my entire life. I love cities. I love the multi-ethnicity of them, the electricity in the air that all that human commerce, interaction and interplay produces. My social orientation is anti-consumerism and my manner of viewing events is not mainstream. I tend to be unconventional. Small talk is not something in which I normally engage. In fact, it bores me to tears.

Most importantly, when we think of "planned communities" we tend to think, like Brandy Davis, of homogeneity. It is logical to believe that I would be absolutely miserable in a homogeneous environment.

At the same time, when one considers the other aspects of my existence --- the heavy involvement in Information Age concerns; my desire for creature-comforts like air conditioning, a cocoon-like home environment in which to work in security, quiet and ease for long stretches of time; that prioritized high-speed Internet access; proximity to urban amenities --- a planned community *could* be placed on the table as a desirable choice.

We have to get beyond our stereotypes and fears of the sterile world projected by atavistic treatises like The Bell Curvein order to factor in the vagaries of historical reality sometimes. For example, the paradigmatic United States planned community of Columbia, Maryland, which both I and my colleague Robin Miller live near, did not turn out exactly as planned. No one visiting that community today could call it either homogeneous or entirely bland (though it still aspires toward the latter.)

I would most likely choose a bohemian ambience for the inspiration and professional contacts it could provide, rather than lean toward the attributes of a home office. Cafes would take priority over ADSL or cable modem facilities, galleries over home climate control.

There are intrinsic preferences in my nature, based on my background. I like a multi-ethnic, working-class environment because that is where I am most comfortable. My own background is solidly working class. My father was a longshoreman until his health began to deteriorate and he had to transition to being an industrial janitor. As an African-American, I have no desire to live in an all-white community. These statuses shape my lifestyle choices.

But they do not preclude a "planned" community, per se.

What these statuses do is raise larger issues. Among those issues are the social and political orientations of the proposed community, its openness to the upwardly mobile, its willingness to incorporate a diverse system of values.

On its face, you would not think that this type of consideration would be central to how the Information Age is shaped. But I believe it is. I believe we are compelled to take the nature, background, values and aspirations of the people involved with the society we are creating into our planning.