History Main / Boomtown

* The page quote comes from an {{Asterix}} film, where the eponymous hero and Obelix go to sleep in a haunted plain... and wake up in Rome (something never explained, but as that film's epilogue remembers, "Let's face it, [[MST3KMantra this is only a cartoon film]], [[RuleOfFunny and anything goes]]!").

Often, the growth of the town will attract undesirable elements, leading to lawlessness and the need for law enforcement to clean it up. Certainly, any boom town is likely to be an [[AdventureTowns Adventure Town]].

Since a boom town often relies on a single resource or attraction, if that dries up the town will start [[DyingTown dying]], quite possibly becoming a GhostTown.

* ''{{Deadwood}}''! Unusual in that you get to actually watch the boom happening, on screen.

[[AC:VideoGames]]
* One of the most extreme examples is Jeuno in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI''. It's certainly longer in the time to grow, but you can't really complain when a small fishing village, in four years, became the economic center of an entire continent and ''an independent nation''.
* ''The'' most extreme example has to be New Town in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'': If you time it right, you can turn a mostly-vacant patch of land a hundred world-map tiles from nowhere into the game world's largest and most-populous town ''and'' witness it undergo a revolution against the leader (whom you appoint). The game has an active day-night cycle, so all of this can transpire, literally, within a few ''days''.
** Featured again in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV''. You help a young entrepreneur to develop a boom town in a patch of desert (which previously was a bazaar) by recruiting people from around the world. Completing this sidequest will turn the boom town into a castle. ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' featured this too.
* The town of Township (yes, that's its name) from ''BreathOfFire2'' starts out as a ruined building that your friend Bow is forced to restore while he hides from the law. When the house gets appropriated by shamans, you hire a proper carpenter to build more buildings, while you recruit helpful people for the population. And it can fly, too. All over the course of one game.
* Your castle in ''{{Suikoden}}'' is usually one of these, as it fills up with the 108 stars and various hangers on. Even if it starts out deserted, by the end of the game your castle is complete with a farm, multiple stores, a blacksmith, a restaurant, an orchestra, an inn, a bathhouse, and any number of other amenities and services.
* A game-spanning sidequest in ''{{Terranigma}}'' involves building up towns from their initial Dark Ages-state into modern societies. In fact, if you ''don't'' participate in this activity, it creates plot holes later on.
* Container City in {{Brink}} is this, a sprawling town built out of shipping containers, built when refugees arrived on The Ark by the boatload. Supposedly modelled on the favelas of Brazil.
* Newcastle in ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic IV'' can be turned from a ruin to the most advanced city on Xeen's Cloudside in a fingersnap, if you have the Megacredits to build it.
* The City of Luin becomes this in TalesOfSymphonia. Well first it was a decent sized city, got burned down to the ground, and then you help restore it. Give enough money and you have giant statues of Sheena, Lloyd, and Rain.

-->-- ''The Twelve Tasks of {{Asterix}}''

** Like many small, rural towns dominated by one industry, the coal mining town of Grantville was shrinking and withering during the 1980s and 1990s... until a NegativeSpaceWedgie transplanted the town to central Germany during the ThirtyYearsWar. The town suddenly found itself the most high-tech place in the world and its population mushroomed with refugees. Inhabitants have tried to maintain building codes and labor standards for all the new construction and industry, but the fact that they haven't always succeeded has been a plot point more than once.

* [[Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude Macondo]] got trough this trope during its [[BananaRepublic Producer Town]] stage.

* Like all Western tropes, it was parodied in LuckyLuke, where the title character was more or less forcibly put into the law-enforcing position. A patch of desert one day becomes a little town the next, with various incidents: a man going to sleep on the ground and waking up to find the place has become an expensive hotel whose owner is urging him to pay; clients waiting impatiently at the bar in a saloon while the walls are being built around them; customers (including a ''robber'') waiting impatiently for the local bank to finish being built and open; and, of course, houses built any old how directly against each other.

* [[OneHundredYearsOfSolitude Macondo]] got trough this trope during its [[BananaRepublic Producer Town]] stage.

* One of the most extreme examples is Jeuno in ''FinalFantasyXI''. It's certainly longer in the time to grow, but you can't really complain when a small fishing village, in four years, became the economic center of an entire continent and ''an independent nation''.

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* One of the most extreme examples is Jeuno in ''FinalFantasyXI''. It's certainly longer in the time to grow, but you can't really complain when a small fishing village, in four years, became [[CapitalCity the economic center of an entire continent and]] ''[[CapitalCity an independent nation]]''.

* Grantville in the [[SixteenThirtyTwo 1632]] series. Like many small, rural towns dominated by one industry, it was shrinking and withering during the 1980s and 1990s... until a NegativeSpaceWedgie transplanted the town to central Germany during the ThirtyYearsWar. The town suddenly found itself the most high-tech place in the world and its population mushroomed with refugees. Inhabitants have tried to maintain building codes and labor standards for all the new construction and industry, but the fact that they haven't always succeeded has been a plot point more than once.
** In the same series, Magdeburg is almost a boom town. Historically, the city was almost completely massacred during the war, but in the new timeline of the story it is being turned into a capital of a new empire.

[[AC:Comic Books]]

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC:Literature]]
* Grantville in the [[SixteenThirtyTwo 1632]] series. Like many small, rural towns dominated by one industry, it was shrinking and withering during the 1980s and 1990s... until a {{Negative Space Wedgie}} transplanted the town to central Germany during the ThirtyYearsWar. The town suddenly found itself the most high-tech place in the world and its population mushroomed with refugees. Inhabitants have tried to maintain building codes and labor standards for all the new construction and industry, but the fact that they haven't always succeeded has been a plot point more than once.
** In the same series, Magdeburg is almost a boom town. Historically, the city was almost completely massacred during the war, but in the new timeline of the story it is being turned into a capital of a new empire.

* Tell Sackett founds one of these almost inadvertently in the [[LouisLAmour Louis L'Amour]] novel ''Sackett'', as a cover for his more profitable gold strike some distance away.

* Holy Wood in the {{Discworld}} novel ''Discworld/MovingPictures''.

* ''{{Deadwood}}''! Unusual in that you get to actually watch the boom happening, on screen.

* Tombstone was a boom town around the time of Wyatt Earp, which is covered in many movies.

** And the ones in California 50 years earlier.

[[AC:Video Games]]

* ''The'' most extreme example has to be New Town in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'': If you time it right, you can turn a mostly-vacant patch of land a hundred world-map tiles from nowhere into the game world's largest and most-populous town ''and'' witness it undergo a revolution against the leader (whom you appoint). The game has an active day-night cycle, so all of this can transpire, literally, within a few ''days''.

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* The page quote comes from an {{Asterix}} film, where the titular hero and Obelix go to sleep in a haunted plain... and wake up in Rome (something never explained, but as that film's epilogue remembers, "Let's face it, [[MST3KMantra this is only a cartoon film]], [[RuleOfFunny and anything goes]]!").

* ''The'' most extreme example has to be New Town in ''DragonQuestIII'': If you time it right, you can turn a mostly-vacant patch of land a hundred world-map tiles from nowhere into the game world's largest and most-populous town ''and'' witness it undergo a revolution against the leader (whom you appoint). The game has an active day-night cycle, so all of this can transpire, literally, within a few ''days''.
** Featured again in ''DragonQuestIV''. You help a young entrepreneur to develop a boom town in a patch of desert (which previously was a bazaar) by recruiting people from around the world. Completing this sidequest will turn the boom town into a castle. ''DragonQuestVII'' featured this too.

* In ''The Dandy'' there was a Molly cartoon where she demanded she have her own award ceremony. So she managed to get a construction company to build a building (for the awards ceremony) by the evening.

* Grantville in the [[SixteenThirtyTwo 1632]] series. Like many small, rural towns dominated by one industry, it was shrinking and withering during the 1980s and 1990s... until a {{Negative Space Wedgie}} transplanted the town to central Germany during the Thirty Years War. The town suddenly found itself the most high-tech place in the world and its population mushroomed with refugees. Inhabitants have tried to maintain building codes and labor standards for all the new construction and industry, but the fact that they haven't always succeeded has been a plot point more than once.

->'''Asterix''': "There is something funny going on here."
->'''Obelix''': "Either that or these Romans have learnt to build very fast."
-->--''The Twelve Tasks of {{Asterix}}''

Sometimes a town grows very rapidly, doubling in population or more in a very short time. In TheWildWest, this often happened around gold or silver strikes, or where water was discovered in an arid area. While the rapid expansion lasts, the community is a BoomTown.

Boom towns tend to have a lot of new construction, much of it ramshackle, to house the new residents and businesses. In [[TheWestern Westerns]], most of the businesses will be saloons, gambling halls, and other entertainments designed to get the newfound wealth of the residents into the business owners' pocket. Churches and schools will come later, with the maturation of the town.

Often, the growth of the town will attract undesirable elements, leading to lawlessness and the need for law enforcement to clean it up. Certainly, any boom town is likely to be an [[{{AdventureTowns}} Adventure Town]].

[[AC: Comic Books]]

* Like all Western tropes, it was parodied in LuckyLuke, where the title character was more or less forcibly put into the law-enforcing position. A patch of desert one day becomes a little town the next, with various incidents: a man going to sleep on the ground and waking up to find the place has become an expensive hotel whose owner is urging him to pay; clients waiting impatiently at the bar in a saloon while the walls are being built around them; customers (including a ''robber'') waiting impatiently for the local bank to finish being built and open; and, of course, houses built any old how directly against each other.
-->'''Luke''': No way, we need to knock down some houses and build streets...

* In ''{{Tintin}} in America'', the discovery of oil in a piece of InjunCountry leads to its overnight conversion into a bustling small city. (The Indians are forced to leave within an hour.)

[[AC: Film]]

[[AC: Literature]]

* The obscure Venezuelan novel ''Oficina Número 1'' takes place constrating the GhostTown in the prequel ''Casas Muertas''

[[AC: Live Action Television]]

[[AC: Musical]]

[[AC: Real Life]]

[[AC: Video Games]]
* One of the most extreme examples is Jeuno in ''FinalFantasyXI''. It's certainly longer in the time to grow, but you can't really complain when a small fishing village, in four years, became [[CapitalCity the economic center of an entire continent and]] ''[[CapitalCity an independent nation.]]''

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* The titular Mahagonny on ''TheRiseAndFallOfTheCityOfMahagonny''

* Rumson Creek in ''Paint Your Wagon''. Renamed "No Name City" in the film version]].

Not to be confused with short-lived series ''Boomtown'', or [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS1E11BoomTown the Doctor Who episode]].

** Featured again in ''DragonQuestIV''. You help a young entrepreneur to develop a boom town in a patch of desert (which previously was a bazaar) by recruiting people from around the world.

* A game-spanning sidequest in ''{{Terranigma}}'' involves building up towns from their initial Dark Ages-state into modern societies. In fact, if you ''don't'' participate in this activity, it creates plot holes later on/

Often, the growth of the town will attract undesirable elements, leading to lawlessness and the need for law enforcement to clean it up. Certainly, any boom town is likely to be an AdventureTown.

* Rumson Creek in ''Paint Your Wagon''. (Renamed "No Name City" in the [[AdaptationDecay film version]]).

* Dubai.