Lessons to be learnt from Disney's Pop Century Resort

The authors of Learning from Las Vegas (a hymn to the urban planning positives of the Vegas Strip) have written a good analytical piece in the current ish of Metropolis, analyzing Disney World's new Pop Century resort.

We see the Pop Century Resort as a third evolution of Pop Urbanism–beyond that engaging the symbolic-surface makeup of the first Las Vegas, evolving from the Strip; beyond that engaging the scenographic formal makeup of the second Las Vegas, evolving from Disneyland. Here is a vivid urban complex that is beginning to embrace symbolic content by combining surface and form, graphic signage, and sculptural symbolism–both the "decorated shed" and the "duck" (i.e., the loft whose surfaces are ornamented with signs, and the building as sculptural symbol).

What is to come next? The urban complex that is a city rather than a resort–a vivid multifaceted place that pragmatically juxtaposes decorated sheds and ducks through signage and sculpture, civic and commercial content–all in the service of enhanced communication, the vital community-building tool of our multicultural era. This is what the Las Vegases and Pop Century Resorts are leading up to and what the Tokyo of today has essentially achieved.

Link

(Thanks, Bruce!)