City of the Future: Brought to you by Glenn Beck

Urban growth boundaries, a lack of private vehicles, prohibition of chain-stores, apprenticeships and job security for all, local food production, wind farms and renewable energy production … all of this can be yours in Glenn Beck’s new planned city: Independence, USA.

Independence is one of the first creations from Glenn Beck’s new “American Dream Labs” - a multimedia, engineering, entertainment, and research company. At least in part, American Dream Labs and Independence were inspired by Walt Disney’s 1953 business plan (which Beck bought at auction in 2012), and references both EPCOT and the Walt Disney Imagineering design and development concepts.

While it isn’t clear from the video (click on the picture above, or the TheBlazeTV article to watch 20+ minutes of video on the planned community) is if Independence will be more theme park or actual town, or something in between, but regardless, Beck estimates he will need a cool $2 billion to begin his vision of ideal American living.

While Glenn Beck is well known for his dramatic, fiery, and often right-leaning rants on television and radio, his plans for an ideal city seem, well, basically center-left.

His new planned city would steer clear (left or right?) of rampant chain-store consumerism and focus on locally produced food and goods, made by local residents with lifelong job security. Based on his renderings, the walkable city focuses on a pretty dense street-grid, and as Beck explains in the video, cars are not allowed. As Beck continues to explain the importance of sustainable food and energy production, the video pans over rendered wind farms which “feed energy back into the grid.” Independence would have everything: it would even include “a residential area where people of different incomes could all come together and be neighbors.” WOW!

So, as the goons down at DC StreetsBlog put it: is Glenn Beck really a sustainability double-agent, or is urbanism and sustainability so common-sense at this point that all political ideologies can agree on it?

P.S. the giant city wall and single gated entrance already make me feel a little nervous…

P.S.S. there is an Alamo-themed non-denominational prayer hall