 | Celebration has a variety of housing: condominiums and apartments, small and large houses, townhouses and villas. The latter, when they are designed in the "classical" style, are particularly attractive, if you don't mind your Georgian with a dash of palmetto. Since a 22-foot townhouse is considerably less expensive than a free-standing house on a 70-foot lot, buyers have a choice of prices. This is part of a strategy for which Disney deserves credit: attempting to create a community where people with different incomes could live. The worthy goal has proved elusive, however. Since Orlando is a particularly hot real-estate market, and Celebration is popular with home buyers, in the last five years house prices have doubled. Many properties are being bought by investors, rather than conventional home owners, and rented out while awaiting resale. In the early days of Celebration, Disney drew fire for strict rules controlling speculation. It now appears to have been a good idea, since the company's egalitarian vision of Our Town has been compromised. Celebration may be too economically successful for its own good. |  |
Photograph by Witold Rybczynski. |
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