Celebration, U.S.A.

What is it like to start a new community - not a suburb or a subdivision, but a town, intended as a self-supporting community combining the best of the new technological innovations with the most cherished nostalgic events of American towns? In 1997, six months after the first residents relocated to Celebration, Florida - Disney's "model" town - Doug Frantz and Cathy Collins, with their two children, moved there to participate in and report on this new venture. Their report from the trenches follows the ups and downs of the two years the family lived this experiment firsthand; a new afterword details their suprisingly difficult transition back to a "normal life" in Westport, Connecticut. Their experience tells us as much about ourselves and our hopes and dreams as it does about the daily reality of building a community from the ground up.