879 · Return to Progress City: Imagining Walt Disney’s City of Tomorrow

879 · Return to Progress City: Imagining Walt Disney’s City of Tomorrow

What if the most interesting thing about Walt Disney’s Progress City isn’t that it was never built, but that it was never really finished?

Recorded live at the WDW Radio booth at D23, former Walt Disney Imagineering President Bob Weis and artist, architect, and former Imagineer Eric Robison join me to explore Eric’s extraordinary new book, Return to Progress City.

What begins with Walt’s original vision for EPCOT becomes something much bigger: a conversation about imagination, architecture, storytelling, technology, creativity, and what happens when you give yourself permission to start with a blank page.

Eric shares how a pandemic project to paint another 100 Mickeys ended at number 38 when his imagination pulled him back to the Progress City model that had fascinated him since childhood. Bob also reveals something remarkable from Marty Sklar’s archives: Marty’s original handwritten notes from conversations with Walt about EPCOT and the City of Tomorrow.

We explore the wonderfully strange Progress City story Bob and Eric dreamed up over pastrami and martinis, how Imagineers move from rough “chicken scratch” to places filled with story and emotion, why Eric believes something human can disappear when we jump too quickly to the computer, the role of AI in creativity, and why even the most beautiful visual idea still needs a writer and a story.

And then Bob hands Eric a blank card and asks him to draw the future, right there at the table.

I also share something very personal from D23: the release of my new book, The Disney Interviews: Disney Legends Edition. This new 456-page collection preserves 18 in-depth conversations with Disney Legends including Julie Andrews, Marty Sklar, Richard M. Sherman, Tony Baxter, Alan Menken, Joe Rohde, Bob Gurr, Alice Davis, Don Hahn, Jodi Benson, Paige O’Hara, Dave Smith, and more, along with completely new introductions, stories, context, and artwork, along with completely new introductions, stories, context, and artwork.

It is available now in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.

If Walt handed you that blank page today, what would you add to Progress City?

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