I really, really enjoy the movie How to Train Your Dragon for far more reasons than will be covered in this post. This post is about how I enjoy it as an urban planning piece and also what's wrong with it in that regard.
It's 12 days north of hopeless
And a few degrees south of freezing to death.
It's located solidly on the meridian of misery.
My village. In a word: Sturdy.
It's been here for seven generations, but every single building is new.
We have fishing, hunting and a charming view of the sunsets.
The only problems are the pests.
You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes.
We have....DRAGONS.
They are all new because of the ongoing destruction caused routinely by the dragons and yet the town functions like a stable town with long-standing buildings. Real world example of a place where the buildings get torn down routinely by disaster is Haiti and Haiti has huge problems because of it.
They have chronic camps, far too few toilets, dire poverty and even Port au Prince is a city with development challenges. And it kind of pisses me off because there is a known solution for building hurricane-resistant buildings: Round buildings.
I will tell an anecdote from a real estate book:
Someone bought an apartment building and soon found there was no hope of breaking even because the outdated heating system or water boiler or something was too expensive of a carrying cost. Then they found a government grant, fixed it and -- voila! -- the building was suddenly turning a profit and had gone up in value.
So after initially freaking out, once they knew how to fix it, they went actively LOOKING for buildings with similar problems as a means to make good money. Similarly, if you SOLVE a major problem for YOUR community, then you can transform your PR positioning from the opening soliloquy of the movie to the closing one:
It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three.
Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless.
The people that grow here are even more so.
The only upsides are the pets.
While other people have ponies or parrots...
We have...DRAGONS.
Opening Soliloquy
This is Berk.It's 12 days north of hopeless
And a few degrees south of freezing to death.
It's located solidly on the meridian of misery.
My village. In a word: Sturdy.
It's been here for seven generations, but every single building is new.
We have fishing, hunting and a charming view of the sunsets.
The only problems are the pests.
You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes.
We have....DRAGONS.
Analysis
So it's a great piece as someone who thinks about economic development and how small towns try to describe themselves for promotional purposes BUT the relatively stable, North American Middle Class town development does not fit with the statement that every single building is new.They are all new because of the ongoing destruction caused routinely by the dragons and yet the town functions like a stable town with long-standing buildings. Real world example of a place where the buildings get torn down routinely by disaster is Haiti and Haiti has huge problems because of it.
They have chronic camps, far too few toilets, dire poverty and even Port au Prince is a city with development challenges. And it kind of pisses me off because there is a known solution for building hurricane-resistant buildings: Round buildings.
Wind and tsunami waves move naturally around a round building rather than getting caught at (and potentially ripping off) corners. A rounded roof avoids ‘air-planing’- a situation where a strong wind lifts the roof structure up and off of the building.I'm NOT going to post a WHOLE lot of resources about HOW to build round buildings. I am not actually some kind of subjet matter expert qualified to really tell you THIS is an amazing resource and THAT is not, so I'm not going to waste your time trying to pretend to vett anything.
I will tell an anecdote from a real estate book:
Someone bought an apartment building and soon found there was no hope of breaking even because the outdated heating system or water boiler or something was too expensive of a carrying cost. Then they found a government grant, fixed it and -- voila! -- the building was suddenly turning a profit and had gone up in value.
So after initially freaking out, once they knew how to fix it, they went actively LOOKING for buildings with similar problems as a means to make good money. Similarly, if you SOLVE a major problem for YOUR community, then you can transform your PR positioning from the opening soliloquy of the movie to the closing one:
Closing Soliloquy
This is Berk.It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three.
Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless.
The people that grow here are even more so.
The only upsides are the pets.
While other people have ponies or parrots...
We have...DRAGONS.