Page 148 - The Disneyization of Society

CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE

Box 6.1 The Reedy Creek Improvement District
139
The Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) may sound innocuous but it is in fact
a fundamental facet of Disney’s control of its destiny, in terms of such things as
building regulations and autonomy from local control in Disney World. RCID is
based on legislation passed in May 1967 which essentially gave Disney more or less
exclusive control over what it did within the District, which in spatial terms is more
or less coterminous with Disney World. Shortly before his death in December 1966,
Walt filmed a presentation in which he made a plea that his company ‘must have
the flexibility in Disney World to keep pace with tomorrow’s world. We must have
the freedom to work in co-operation with American industry, and to make decisions
based on standards of performance’ (quoted in Zehnder, 1975: 95). This film was
shown to a meeting of local officials in February 1967. A news release based on the
meeting reported that:

one of the principal purposes of the District will be to permit the landowners to
control the environment, planning and operations of the services and
construction essential to the contemplated improvement and development of
the property. (quoted in Zehnder, 1975: 89)

One of the chief justifications for the freedom that was being sought was that it
would be essential for the construction of the community that Walt had planned
would be built at Disney World. He called it the Experimental Prototype Community
of Tomorrow which, in the years after his death, became transformed into Epcot,
which was in fact a theme park rather than a community in which people lived. It
was not until the 1990s that his original vision began to take shape – in the form of
Celebration – but in a rather different form from that which he had originally
contemplated.
The RCID conferred sovereignty upon Disney that allowed it to build and develop
its land in a way that was not hampered by regulations and restrictions that
normally impede developers. As Foglesong puts it, Disney:

was authorized … to regulate land use, provide police and fire services, build
roads, lay sewer lines, license the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages,
even to build an airport and nuclear power plant. … To the envy of other
developers, Disney also won immunity from building, zoning, and land-use
regulations. Orange County officials cannot even send a building inspector to
Disney property… (Foglesong, 2001: 5)