HIBT Lab! Babcock Ranch: Syd Kitson

Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So extreme weather means we'll have to figure out how to build more resilient houses and towns. Last year when Hurricane Ian swept through Florida It caused over a hundred and ten billion dollars worth of damage.

Ian was one of the strongest hurricanes on record. And yet One community that took a direct hit from the hurricane was largely unscathed. It's called Babcock Ranch and the five thousand people who live there rode out the storm without ever losing electricity.

or even the internet. And the reason Babcock Ranch did so well Well, it was designed that way. The town is the brainchild of a real estate developer named Sid Kitson. His story of how he built the town actually starts back in the mid-1980s, when he left a career as a professional football player for the Green Bay Packers.

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