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[reprint from The Nation, 1969-07-28]

Mineral King + Automobiles + Restaurants + Ski Lifts + People = The Disney Imperative

Editor's Note [Trends magazine]

Three thousand miles from Orlando, Florida, Walt Disney Productions is seeking the rights for a recreational development in Mineral King Valley, Sequoia National Forest. This proposal concerns a year-round resort for the people of California. The U.S. Forest Service has described the project as follows:

"On the site of the old, decaying mining town of Mineral King will rise a new self-contained village bearing the same name. Imaginative in concept and contemporary in design, this carefully planned development will create one of the world's major outdoor recreation facilities in a spectacular valley of the California Sierras. Free of cars and skillfully blended into the alpine setting, Mineral King and its attractions will provide wholesome enjoyment for thousands of American families."

Wesley Marx sees this proposal as a mountain variety of Disneyland and views it and other developments of similar nature as a threat to our natural environment. He comments, "There may well be room for such real estate creativity, particularly in the urban environment, but why Mineral King?"

In the process of his argument, Marx raises what appear to be critical questions for TRENDS readers especially in the light of the McCleary article. We are less concerned here with Disney World and Mineral King specifically than with the value conflict that the two articles present. Do they indicate a difference in priorities? Which one has the better argument? Is there even a basis for comparison between the two? We ask you to consider these questions.S.D.

Recently, a newspaper headline proclaimed that a "game preserve" would be set aside near my home in Southern California. My heart jumped. For many months, I have belonged to a citizens' group that seeks to protect Southern California's last remaining natural bay, Upper Newport Bay, from being compressed into a boat storage area for luxury waterfront residences. This life-giving estuary lies near my home; dared to envision a bay sanctuary for blue herons, scallops, young halibut and red-berried California toyon trees. However, the game preserve turned out to be a commercial zoo spectacle called Lion Country Safari. It is being sponsored by the same developer who, with the sympathy of public authorities , makes a paying proposition of the bay. If my faith in land developers is justified, a game preserve called Grizzly Bear Rodeo is rising in a jungle clearing somewhere in South Africa.

This curious expression of conservation confirms my suspicions about the increasing persuasiveness of a trend call the Disney Imperative. It is the compulsion to create artificial environments in place of natural environments. Fantasy thus becomes reality, i.e., Lion Country Safari in Orange County, Calif., and residential marinas atop life-giving estuaries. It is a trend particularly attractive to developers on the make as well as to impetuous architects, and it promises to play more hell with the cause of conservation and environmental quality than the fixations of dam builders and lumber harvesters.

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