Friday Funny: Which City Should Be Home to a Real-Life Jurassic Park?

CityLab stages a humorous competition for the location of a likely-to-go-horribly-wrong tourist attraction.

1 minute read

June 19, 2015, 6:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


"Building a Jurassic Park would be a titanic undertaking for a city, with all the benefits and drawbacks of setting up a world-class zoological facility, developing an Ivy League research institution, and hosting the World Cup," writes Kriston Capps. "Only a few places are cut out for it."

By Capps's analysis, several tiers of cities deserve consideration for a Jurassic Park:

  • "Let dinosaurs eat all the NIMBYs: San Francisco, New York, and Washington D.C." (Although I'm sure there are a few cities that might feel left out of this category, say Los Angeles.) For San Francisco, Capps imagines the outrage: "'A Mesozoic Moratorium in the Mission': The headlines write themselves."
  • "Park in an evil-scientist hub: Boston, San Jose, or Research Triangle" Luckily for the people of Boston, "…unless things have changed since [Capps] was in middle school, dinosaurs are cold-blooded and can’t survive a Northeastern winter."
  • "Bring the dinosaurs home—to Texas" Dinosaurs would mess with Texas.

Finally Capps settles on one particular city as the ideal candidate, but you'll have to click through the link to find out which it is.

Monday, June 15, 2015 in CityLab

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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