If you were to ask any city-planner inside or outside the United States to name the most significant “New Towns” built in this country since World War II, the answer would be Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland, and those answers would be wrong: Reston is a genteel country club located half-way between Washington, DC, and nowhere in particular, and Columbia is a neat sort of suburb, about halfway between Washington and Baltimore, and it may-with lots of luck, which I certainly wish it-grow up to be another Evanston or Stamford around the year 2000. Neither one of these is “New” -the first is an economy-sized Royal Crescent, Bath, England; the second is upper-midcult Levittown. And neither place is a “Town.”
The truth of the matter is that the only New Towns of any significance built in this country since World War II are Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, and Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. Both are “New,” both are “Towns,” and both are staggeringly successful. […]
