Michael Sorkin, Variations on a Theme Park, 1996
This is the
meaning of the theme park, the place that embodies it all, the ageographia, the surveillance
and control, the simulations without end. The theme park presents its happy
regulated vision of pleasure - all those artfully hoodwinking forms - as a
substitute for the democratic public realm, and it does so appealingly
by stripping troubled urbanity of its sting, of the presence of the poor, of crime, of dirt, or
work. In the ÒpublicÓ spaces of the theme park or the shopping mall, speech itself is restricted: there are no
demonstrations in Disneyland. The effort to reclaim the city is the struggle of
democracy itself.
