Disneyland: A Utopian Urban Space

The amusement park, Disneyland, is viewed as a form of settlement space with urban characteristics A sociosemiotic analysis is carried out to uncover the meaning system of this built environment After an introduction to urban semiotics, two dimensions are analyzed according to syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations In the former case, Disneyland is best understood in contrast to the settlement space directly outside it, namely, the regional sprawl of Los Angeles. In the latter case, the park is viewed as structured by two underlying semantic fields The first is the articulation between the late capitalist social formation in the United States and space, while the second is the articulation between the personal ideology of Walt Disney and space.