Gundam trashes Edmonton: how the city became worthy of being blown up

Forget New York, let alone Tokyo: as reader Greg Whistance-Smith points out, the wildly popular Japanese anime show Mobile Suit Gundam has rather bizarrely chosen quiet Edmonton, Alberta as the backdrop for its two-part season finale

One of the peculiar honours shared by the world's major cities is a knack for getting destroyed on screen. Residents of London, New York and Los Angeles have seen their cities fantastically ruined by natural and manmade disasters alike. None have experienced this quite as frequently as Tokyo: radioactive monsters, giant robots, supernatural forces and earthquakes have taken turns smashing the city in films and television shows for the past 60 years. Meticulously depicting a city's demise is, if nothing else, a declaration of its importance: these places are worth destroying.

In Edmonton, a quiet city at the northwestern tip of the Canadian prairies, those images of mass destruction seem exhilaratingly foreign. Edmonton is often forgotten not just in discussions of cities but in discussions of Canadian cities; or else it is humorously acknowledged as a place with endless winters and harsh, Soviet-like architecture. Those half-truths noted, the city nevertheless has its gems, among them an incredible river valley, one of the world's biggest universities (the University of Alberta), and a thriving arts scene, including the world's second largest fringe festival after Edinburgh. It's one of the youngest cities on the continent, with a median age of 36.5, and the northernmost city of more than 1 million people.