经济学人 | 迪士尼小镇的故事

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迪士尼乐园，现实生活中的梦幻之地。近一个世纪来，它见证了多少孩童的稚嫩天真，多少学生的青春韶华，多少恋人的两情相悦，多少耄耋的相濡以沫。总之，迪士尼就是一切美好的代名词。

你是否幻想过，如果迪士尼是真实存在的世界呢？如果能永远住在那里，与米老鼠、唐老鸭做邻居呢？

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What Disney’s city of the future, built to look like the past, says about the present

Celebration, Florida

OUTSIDE the white fence is all strip malls, motels and resort villages. Come off the six-lane highway at the spaghetti junction where Interstate 4 meets Highway 192, go past the ornamental water tower, and you are in Celebration, a town of the sort that America stopped building in the 1950s. Most of its 4,000 homes are small by suburban standards, jutting up against narrow streets. Children walk to school. The small downtown has no chains, apart from an obligatory Starbucks. Its 10,000-odd residents are mostly white, white-collar and Republican. In some ways it is a vision of America’s past. Yet Celebration is only 20 years old.

Celebration ：是一个地名，翻译成庆典小镇。

这个地方，一开始并不是弗罗里达州的一个城市，是后来迪士尼建造的旅游小镇，地理位置上紧邻奥兰多迪士尼乐园，类似国家举办08年奥运会的时候建造的奥运村。小镇于1996年开始建造，发展到现在已经是五脏俱全，有自己的学校医院市政厅等等，是新城市主义的代表之一。

Spaghetti Junction：spaghetti是意大利面，Junction汇合处。意大利面汇合的地方，其实是比喻立交桥，很形象。

Obligatory：有义务的，必须的；一个常用的句型就是：Sb’s obliged to do sth，某人有义务做某事。E.g. we’re obliged to show filial obedience to our parents

这个小镇是迪士尼版本的未来城市。旧时的小镇，却叙述着当今。

远远望着，白色的篱笆外，是繁华的购物中心，旅馆，度假村。驾车到洲际4号公路与192号交汇处的立交桥，沿着六车道高速路向前行进，就来到了在20世纪50年代就停止建造的庆典小镇。小镇上的4000户人家，都是郊外的建筑风格，整齐的坐落在狭窄道路的两旁。孩子们步行去学校，放眼望去，除了一个必须存在的星巴克，没有其他的连锁店。小镇的居民大多是白人，白领以及共和党人。有些旧时美国的样貌，但小镇很年轻，还是个90后。

The town was developed by Disney as an antidote to the isolation of the suburbs. By the 1970s more Americans lived in suburbs than either in cities or in rural areas. Two decades later there were more cars than drivers in America. By the turn of the century, SUV-driving suburbanites became the majority, outnumbering rural and city folk combined. The wholesale shift to the suburbs, ever-longer commutes and the rise of shopping malls and big-box stores fractured community life, as downtowns emptied and commerce shifted to the edges of highways.

Antidote : 解药,解毒剂；这个单词是一个合成词，anti反对，dote意为糊涂的，放在一起就是解毒剂，矫正的意思。

Suburbanites : 郊区居民；Suburbs是郊区，合理变换之后猜想到这个应该是郊区居民。

Nostalgia ：对往事的怀恋, 怀旧。

迪士尼将小镇作为拯救孤立的郊外地区一剂良药。1970时代，更多的美国人是住在郊区而不是住在城市里或者农村，以至于二十年之后，美国的车要比司机多。2000年之后，开SUV车型的郊区居民变得多了起来，远远超过了城市居民。车辆经销商发现了这片商机，把销售战略着重放在了郊区居民这块。之后通过美国人们对于居住在城市及郊区的观念转变，越来越多的人住在郊区，市中心空了，商圈也聚集在高速路边缘，社区这种聚集模式被冲撞的支离破碎。

Disney offered Celebration as an antidote to all this, selling the development on nostalgia for an old-timey America where, as its adverts read, “neighbours greeted neighbours in the quiet of summer twilight”. It would be built around five cornerstones: in addition to “a sense of place” and “a sense of community”, the small town, which was planned to grow to 20,000 residents, would also offer progressive education, world-class health facilities and cutting-edge technology. Michael Eisner, who ran Disney at the time, believed it would be a “community of tomorrow”.

而迪士尼为了改变这样一种现象，秉持着“邻居能够在夏日的月光中互相微笑”这一理念，想要打造一个一体化的小镇。除了完成一些基本的情怀设定，这个小镇是真心想要把大家聚集起来，它计划包含20000名左右的居民，并且保证高质量的教育以及提供领先的医疗机构。Michael Eisner认为这座小镇就是“未来的社区”。

其实读到这里，大家就应该知道，第一部分的这几段其实就是在介绍小镇的基本情况，以及小镇是如何应运而生的。

House mouse

Disney’s interest in town development started with its founder. In a filmed appearance on October 27th 1966, Walt Disney laid out his vision for the 27,400 acres of land he had secretly acquired in central Florida. It would include a theme park, an industrial park and an airport. At its heart would be an “experimental prototype community of tomorrow”, or EPCOT (see article). This community would have 20,000 residents, a central business district and futuristic public transport. Cars and lorries would be hidden away underground. It was planned as a showcase of modern technology and “the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise”. Two months later Disney died of lung cancer. The plan was shelved.

House Mouse ：应该是因为小镇是迪士尼建的，大家都知道迪士尼的标志吉祥物就是米老鼠。

Prototype ：原型，雏形，蓝本

EPCOT ：首字母组成的单词，类似联合国教科文组织（UNESO）。EPCOT意为明日世界。

Lorries : lorry的复数形式，意为卡车，货车

Shelved ：Shelved，shelf架子的动词形式，意为被搁置。和shave刮胡子，长的有些相像，注意区分哦

带着这样的信仰，一座风景宜人，宁静美好的庆典小镇诞生了。

华特迪士尼老爷子早在1966年就申请下了弗罗里达州的27,400英亩土地。他对这片土地的安排要有主题公园，工业园区，还要有机场。城市的中心老爷子把它描绘成了未来的社区该有的样子，比如：各种未来感的交通工具。老爷子希望这座城市不仅能够成为现代科技的展品，也能体现美国企业的智慧和想象力。然而，两个月后，老爷子因肝癌去世，这个项目也搁浅了。

这部分就是讲述小镇从一开始的idea，到blue pint到小镇的建成。说着是一句话的事情，但却是Walt老爷爷临终前的梦想。

In 1971 Walt Disney World opened on the land. By 1985 it was home to two theme parks with a third under construction (a fourth was added later), hundreds of hotel rooms and plenty of land to spare. But changes in Florida’s environmental laws had Disney executives worried that the state would reclaim some of their property unless it was put to use. The contentious land was an alligator-infested swamp, cut off from Disney World by a highway and unsuitable for another theme park. It seemed a shame to waste it. Executives approached Mr Eisner, who was keen on urban planning, with the idea of building a town. He agreed—but only once he was convinced that it would not be yet another suburban tract of homes attached to a golf course, with the Disney logo slapped on it.

Reclaim ：要求收回

Contentious ：容易引起争论的

Alligator-infested ：Alligator是鳄鱼，infest是感染。两个词综合在一起看，应该是说鳄鱼经常出没的。

Swamp ：沼泽

Slap : 击掌；在这里用了非谓语动词修饰logo，想表达的意思是打上迪士尼的logo

1971年，奥兰多迪士尼乐园开业，到1985年时，整个乐园已经拥有两个主题公园，第三个在建，第四个是后来增建的。不过还有一部分土地没用完。但是弗罗里达州环境法规的变化让迪士尼高层担心土地如果不投入使用，州政府可能会收回。为了避免浪费，高层们找了一个很牛逼的人，也就是前文提到的Mr.Eisner，并用老爷子的梦想打动了他，于是庆典小镇投入建造。

Around the time that Disney started working on its town-building project, a movement called new urbanism was taking off. Its big success came with the development of Seaside, Florida, a picturesque resort village which many years later became the setting for “The Truman Show”, a dystopian film set in a perfect town. New urbanism advocated building on a human scale, planning for walking and mixing residential and commercial zoning. Celebration’s developers set out to adapt that ethos to their town. Though brand new, the town would look like a charming mid-Atlantic city, such as Savannah, Georgia or Charleston, South Carolina.

Urbanism ：城市主义；大家要记住加ism单词后缀的都是···主义，idealism理想主义，idolism，盲目崇拜主义。

Picturesque ：优美的，如画的，古色古香的，栩栩如生的；另外请记住这个词缀-esque意为……式的，比如lionesque，如狮的，凶猛的；Disneyesque，迪士尼式的；Romanesque，罗马式的等等。

Setting ：拍摄地

Dystopian ：反面乌托邦；大家都知道utopia，乌托邦。dys前缀意为恶化，加在一起就是反面乌托邦，dys这个前缀常用于医学用语。例如：dyspepsia，消化不良；dystrophy营养不良；注意和dis区分，两个词缀的意义类似，dis意为没有，缺少，···的反面。但是不能够互换。只有dysfunction也可以写成disfunction。

Ethos ：社会思潮；研究过演讲艺术的会对这个词比较熟悉，亚里士多德在其著作“The art of rhetorical”雄辩的艺术一书中有提到，一次成功的演说只有包括了三个方面才会有效果和说服力，即ethos, logos and pathos，分别是信誉证明，逻辑证明和情感证明。其中的ethos就是本文中提到的社会思潮。

在此期间，美国刮起了新式城市主义风，这一股风吹出的成功案例就是弗罗里达州的滨海小镇。

而且这个小镇多年之后还成为了著名电影楚门的世界的拍摄地点之一。

新城市主义的几个特点总结起来就是一句人类数量的，适合悠闲散步的，拥有综合居住商业区的小镇。庆典小镇的开发商决定沿用这一社会思潮，之后在此理念的引导下，小镇建成了。虽然城市非常的新，但看起来就像是迷人的中部亚特兰大城。

为什么这么讲？亚特兰大的特点就是，没有纽约加州的快节奏，但也没有其他中部南方地区生活的不便利。如此看来，像是我大天朝的成都，生活节奏慢，设施齐全，无比便利的大城市。

Judged as an investment, Celebration was a blockbuster. Demand for the first set of lots was so high that Disney had to hold a lottery. Prices started at $120,000 for the smallest homes and at $300,000 for bigger ones; the median house price in the surrounding area was $80,000. Disney invested $100m in the project but it had bought the land for next to nothing. Construction was left to contractors, and money for roads and lighting came from municipal bonds that were paid back by residents.

Blockbuster : 重磅炸弹, 了不起的人或事

Municipal bonds ：政府债券

庆典小镇投入使用之后，场面一度火爆，开发商不得不“摇号”卖房。房价部分的情况是这样的 ：最小的房子（注意，有前提的，人家都是别墅）12万美元，大一些的呢，就是30万美元，少偏远一些的房子8万美元。迪士尼称自己在这个新项目中投入了100万美元，但其实自己基本没掏钱，因为建筑的钱是建筑商掏的，基础公共设施的钱来自于居民的政府债券。

事情真的会如此顺利的进行么？我们继续往下看。

Judged as an attempt to recreate a quasi-mythical past, things did not go so smoothly. Part of Celebration’s appeal was that it would offer a public school with a private education. “What was promised was a revolution in education,” says Lawrence Haber, whose family was the first to move into Celebration, on June 18th 1996. Disney gathered experts from Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities, among others, to design the curriculum. There would be no grades. Classes would be mixed, with children of different age groups studying together. It proved a disaster. Kids slacked off. Without test scores, parents were unable to track their children’s progress. Arguments and fist-fights broke out between parents. The school eventually separated into two more conventional public schools. Mr Haber says he might not have moved to Celebration were it not for the school. Many early settlers felt the same way. Some left.

Quasi – mythical : quasi好像，似乎；mythical虚构的，这里意为半虚构的。

Slacked off : 松懈，消极怠工

庆典小镇被认为是对半虚构过去的重建，很多事情进行的并不是那么顺利。当初小镇建立之初对人们的一个很大的吸引是提供一个有着私人教育的公立学校。一位在1996年就第一批安家在庆典小镇的家长说，小镇承诺的其实是一场教育改革。迪士尼聚集了教育行业的一些专家大佬，大家开了个会，拍了拍脑袋，设计出来一些新课程。这些课程的特点是不分年级不分班级，放羊式学习。这其实带来一场灾难，孩子们变得非常懒散，根本不爱学习。因为这个课程还取消了考试，没有了考试成绩，家长不知道孩子的学习状况，甚至家长之间有时还会出现暴力事件。最终，学校还是分成了两所公立学校，变成了公立学校该有的样子。那位第一批安家的家长说，如果当初知道会这么搞教育，他可能死都不会搬家来着。许多早期的安家者也都感同身受，其中的一部分人甚至已经离开了小镇。

至此，第二部分结束，主要讲述了庆典小镇的发展之路，idea是怎么来的？在什么的推动之下应运而生的，中间又遇到那些问题的。

Town cat

The promises of high technology fared little better. The original vision involved fibre-optic cables to every home. It never happened. Neither did elaborate plans that resembled an ambitious early Netflix or those for community services online. A scheme in which residents got free computers in exchange for allowing their browsing activities to be tracked fizzled out once AT&T, Disney’s corporate partner for technology in the town, realised it had no use for the data, write Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in “Celebration, USA”, an account of their first year living in the town in the late 1990s. Only the health centre was an unequivocal hit. The hospital, run as a non-profit by the Seventh-Day Adventist church, feels like a resort hotel. It includes a gym and a spa.

Fibre-optic : 光导纤维的

Fizzled out : 终于失败

Unequivocal : 只有一种含意的 ; 清楚明白的

所谓未来世界所依赖的各种高科技，小镇并没有实现这一愿景。说好的高清电视，说好的Netflix，说好的网上社区服务，都没有。当初小镇建立之时许下的愿望，现在看来其实都是一场阴谋。居民用自己的浏览记录交换免费网络的使用权这个看起来美好的方法，一旦美国电话电报（类似联通）意识到那些浏览记录并没有什么用，这种获得免费网络的方法根本没有可行性。

小镇里唯一实现了当初许下的承诺的设施就是保健中心了，这家保健中心是教堂运行，平时不收取大家的费用，里面还有健身房和美容院。

这段里面暴露了小镇更多的问题，不仅仅是教育系统的混乱。理想和现实之间的鸿沟有多大，这部分让大家了解的更加清晰了。

Some of the early shortcomings could be put down to teething troubles. But at Celebration’s core was nostalgia, making the last two cornerstones, “sense of place” and “sense of community”, the most important. Celebration certainly feels different from the rest of American suburbia. Disney invested in building the downtown area so it would be open the day the first families moved in. It commissioned famous architects to build the town hall, the post office, the cinema and other communal buildings. It invited doctors to live in the town so there would be, for example, an optometrist. It located the town centre, quaintly, in the centre of town even though putting it by the highway would have made more economic sense.

Teething troubles ：事情发展初期的困难；为什么是teething？其实就是来自于婴儿初长牙时候的困扰。例如：Cannot see each other is just the teething trouble of long distance relationship。

Commission ： 授权, 委托；委员会；佣金, 回扣；委任, 委托

Optometrist ：验光师

但是，所有事情的刚开始都会遇到一些麻烦。除开这些之外，更主要的问题是庆典小镇的初心是给人们一个有归属感的社区，但是这个东西实现起来更加困难。为了这个，迪士尼也做了很多的努力，邀请了著名设计师参与公共设施的建造，专门请了医生，还把商业中心放在了小镇的中心，虽然这样的设计会导致很多经济机会流失掉。

Yet the cinema, a towering faux-art-deco edifice designed by César Pelli has been closed for several years. Locals complained that the downtown lacked basic necessities such as a hardware store or a hairdresser. The small town-centre grocery store shut too, replaced by a big-box supermarket by the highway. The downtown area, which was sold by Disney in 2004, is in poor repair. One block of flats is being entirely renovated, another is held up by wooden support columns, a third is covered with tarpaulin to prevent leaks. Residents of the downtown condominiums complain that they face huge extra fees for repairs despite having paid for maintenance. A lawsuit is in the works.

faux-art-deco ：虚假的装饰艺术。faux意为人造的，deco是装饰decoration的简写。比如：faux-cause不自然的，faux-fur人造皮草。所以人造的装饰艺术，也可以等同于虚假的装饰艺术。

Renovate : 更新

Condominiums ：公寓；托管公寓

然而，这家由著名设计师设计的电影院在开了几年以后还是以倒闭告终。不仅如此，当地居民还抱怨小镇连一些基本的生活需要品都没有，比如五金店和理发店。当地的百货店也关了，换成了一个紧邻高速公路的大型超市。市中心也变得破败不已。一个单位的公寓正在完全翻新，另一个单位的公寓是由木制支撑柱，且三分之一是用篷布覆盖以防止泄漏。生活在市中心的公寓里的居民们抱怨说尽管已经支付了维修费用，他们还面临着巨大的额外修理费用。他们正在通过诉讼的途径来解决这些事情。

To the extent that Celebration can boast of a sense of place, it is opposition to Osceola county, of which it forms a part, where median incomes are about half as big. Celebration voted for Donald Trump; both the district and county it is in voted Democrat. Celebration is cute and orderly; the surrounding areas are covered in strip malls and fast-food chains. The median house price in Celebration is $345,700, more than twice that of the nearest town and far higher than any other settlement in the county, according to Zillow, a real-estate company.

Democrat ：民主党

庆典小镇吹嘘其社区归属感，但事实上，作为Osceola county的一部分，小镇的中位数收入是O城的两倍。除了经济收入水平和别人格格不入，小镇的政治观念也颇为奇特。是其所在地区，唯一一个投票给川普（共和党）的地方，其他地区都支持民主党。不过呢，小镇其实在某些地方挺可爱的，比如到处都有连锁快餐店，小镇的房价呢，自然也是比周遭的贵很多。

median incomes，中位数收入。其实国内，在衡量经济指标的问题上，对于公布中位数收入水平的呼声也是越来越高了。中位数收入就是比如衡量4000人的收入水平，把所有人的收入从低到高排序，最后取第2000名的工资，最能够反应社会平均水平。而不是现在流行的算平均数，坊间流传了一个段子说的十分形象。“张家有财一千万，九个邻居穷光蛋，平均起来算一算，个个都是张百万”。

The disparity has tugged away at the communal ethos Disney hoped to foster. Old-timers talk up shared experiences, the town foundation that helps out the poor, the many community groups. Newer residents are less enthused. Many parents send their children to private schools elsewhere, blaming an influx of kids from outside Celebration. A quarter of pupils at Celebration School and two-thirds at Celebration High School qualify for free or subsidized lunches, a proxy for poverty. Many of them come from the nearby Highway 192, where motels have turned into rent-by-the-week homes for transient minimum-wage workers.

Tugge away ：拽走

Old-timers : 老前辈；有经验的人

Foster：培育

Enthuse：热心

Influx : 大量涌入

理想和现实之间的种种差别破坏了迪士尼想要在此建立理想国的梦想。一些老前辈说了，如果小镇是为帮助穷人建的，那么社区会聚齐起来的。那些小镇上新来的人，就没那么狂热了，他们会把自己的孩子送到其他地方读书，还怪小镇外的人把孩子送进来。庆典小镇里四分之一的小学和四分之三的中学是提供免费午餐的，这也是一项只针对穷人的补助。很多学生来自于192号高速公路附近，那里的汽车旅馆都变成了周租房，租给短租的底层劳动者。

The well-intentioned hope to recreate some version of America’s past has been defeated by the country’s present. The parks, pools and playgrounds in Celebration belong to the residents’ association and are off-limits to non-residents. Sitting on a park bench is considered trespassing. Residents complain about tourists peeking over their fences or the thousands of children from neighbouring areas who descend on them at Halloween. Celebration was founded by Disney on the principle of openness—the school and utilities are public, and the county sheriff’s office provides police patrols. Yet it has become a gated community, just without the gates.

Trespassing ：擅自进入；侵入

Sheriff ：州长

原本期望能够重建老美国式小镇的愿望被现实打破的不堪一击。属于庆典小镇居民的停车场，游泳池以及操场都不对非小镇居民开放，坐一下草坪都被认为是非法侵入。当地居民抱怨说游客旺季时，成千上万的游客聚集在外面，在万圣节时，还有很多附近地区的熊孩子乱跑。初心哪去了，小镇的初衷是要建造一个开放式社区，学校以及公共设施都是开放式的。如今呢，它已成为一个封闭的社区，只是没有大门罢了。

In Disneyworld

Yet for all its failings, Celebration has changed America. It provided a prototype for mixed-use development that encouraged more permissive zoning laws, says Robert Steuteville of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Baldwin Park, a successful residential development with a commercial heart, in nearby Orlando, was a refinement of the idea. Celebration demonstrated that suburban cities could market themselves to house-buyers by evoking urbanity. These days almost all suburban developers talk about “place-making” and “urban-style” living, and fostering a sense of community. Celebration got them talking that way.

Permissive ：宽大的；放任的

Refinement ：细微的改良

虽然庆典小镇发展的不好，但却给美国带来了一定程度的改变。一个推崇新城市主义的人说，它提供了一个综合开发的原型，想要进一步发展就得鼓励更自由的地区法律。Baldwin Park就是一个比较成功的商住结合的代表，其实它也只是在新城市主义的基础上做了一些改良。庆典小镇证明了即使是郊区城市也可以把市场弄的很活，变得很有商业气息。现在越来越多的郊区开发者谈论“地方营造”以及“城市风格”，其实这些都是源于庆典小镇。

很多时候我们写文章，都会讲究起承转合。前面作者一直在叙述庆典小镇不好的以免，到了最后还是点出了一些不错的地方。因为即使庆典小镇是失败的，那也得对后续的发展有借鉴和教训意义，所以还是要把闪光点摘出来。

A big part of Celebration’s success came from its association with Disney. “People had an impression that if they moved their kids to a Disney town, their lawns would never get any weeds and their children would never get anything but ‘A’s,” says Peter Rummell, who led the development for Disney. Mike Harford, until November’s election the county commissioner for the district that includes Celebration, grew up in Osceola county when “there was nothing but cows.” “If it had stayed that way, I would have had to go somewhere else,” he says. In the land of fresh starts, nostalgia can be the most effective marketing pitch for a new future, in property development as in

Lawn：草坪，草地

nostalgia：怀旧

庆典小镇之所以能够名声大噪，很大一部分原因归于其背后的迪士尼。因为人们会有这样的一种印象：一旦他们的小孩在那里成长，小孩子们永远都会是快乐的，成绩也会都是A，什么都是非常美好的。

庆典小镇所在区的县长，他成长的O城，是一个只有牛群的地方，他说，如果他的家乡一辈子都是那副模样，他肯定早早地就搬到其他地方去了。而在一个新的征程中，乡愁也许是最能打动人的一种情感。

在高楼林立，人与人之间习惯了多一分防备的现在，住在一个贫富平等，温馨有爱的社区是大家心中隐藏的梦想。但即使是以将梦幻变成现实的迪士尼公司也失败了。不过梦想还是要有的，万一实现了呢？

英文原文：

http://www.economist.com/news

讲解：霞姐 / Tiassa / C 

编排 / 校对：魔力校花

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