The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney’s New Town - Softcover

Ross, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859847722 ISBN 13: 9781859847725

Publisher: Verso Books, 2000

Synopsis

Amidst the swamp and scrub of central Florida, the Disney Corporation has built Celebration, an environmentally friendly place where 20,000 inhabitants can enjoy the old-fashioned virtues of small-town America in a totally modern development. With newly minted antique homes, a post office designed by Michael Graves, stringent regulations banning the hanging of washing outside and For Sale signs on lawns, and piped muzak issuing from the palm trees that line its streets, no detail of Celebration has been left unplanned. And yet, as Andrew Ross discovered in his year-long stay in Celebration, not everything has turned out according to Disney's master scheme. Construction atrocities, a product of contractors using underpaid labor, have tormented homeowners. Ultra-progressive teaching methods at the town school have divided parents into angry, opposing groups. Youth, aware that the town's property values depend on their test scores, mooch disconsolately around the pristine shopping center. Andrew Ross, in The Celebration Chronicles, draws important lessons from a micromanaged urban development and reports, with humor and fascinating detail, on what residents experienced as the best and worst of times.

About this title

Review:

".... Entertaining and insightful. Ross is a raconteur with delicious and often telling anecdotes." -- The New York Times "Our first astronaut-in-residence on Planet Disney returns with astonishing tales of its strange life-form and customs. As an explorer of brave new worlds, Ross is a shrewd cross between Jonathan Swift and C. Wright Mills." - Mike Davis "[A] likeable and an entertaining observer of the social ecology." -- The New Yorker "Moving from a cogent analysis of the town to a multifaceted consideration of the environmental implications of American liberty, The Celebration Chronicles is a masterpiece of American Studies scholarship." - Amazon.com "Refreshingly unacademic ... an astute look at a notable, if in some respects surreal, experiment in community building." -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Andrew Ross is the author of various books including No Respect, Strange Weather, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life and Real Life, as well as the editor of No Sweat.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1859847722
• ISBN 13: 9781859847725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352