YODAVILLE, Ariz. -- From a mile or two, the black and white buildings look like a small town, shimmering in the 106-degree heat of the southwestern Arizona desert.

Up close, the structures are fakes -- frauds built of cargo containers and bomb canisters. The houses are eight feet high. The black-top streets are sand that's colored black by chemicals.

But for the Marine Corps, Yodaville is Mogadishu, Somalia; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; or Pristina, Kosovo. Just name a city in one of the world's trouble spots, and Yodaville can be it.

The Marines hope their "town" 35 miles southeast of Yuma will help the military develop more efficient and safer ways to attack villages, towns and cities from the air.

Inaugurated this week, Yodaville is the first urban bombing range for the U.S. military.

Military experts predict that cities, where up to 70 percent of the world's population will live, will be the likely battlefields of the next century. Fighting in an urban environment is difficult because forces can hide easily and battles are fought block by block and house by house.

Those lessons were learned during World War II, Korea and Vietnam, but largely forgotten in the 30 years since -- a hard fact discovered in the dusty streets and alleys of Mogadishu in October 1993 when 18 soldiers and airmen were killed by a ragtag militia.

Recently, the Marines' war-fighting laboratory at Quantico, Va., has been developing techniques for fighting urban battles through a series of war games, including one earlier this year in Oakland and San Francisco.

This week, the lab used jets and helicopters from San Diego County-based Marine units to try out the experimental urban close-air-support bombing range near Yuma.

Nicknamed "Yodaville," after the radio call sign of its creator, Maj. Floyd Usry, the bombing range is laid out like a small town amid the sand, cactus and rattlesnakes.

"We're not sure what works well in a city," said Gen. Terrence Dake, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, who visited the town this week.

"We have lots of questions," said the Marines' No. 2 general. "We hope this gives us the answers."

Usry, a Marine aviator, came up with the idea several years ago.

The site cost $500,000 and took seven months of work by Marine Corps engineers at nearby Yuma Marine Corps Air Station.

The concept came out of the realization that while Marines could train for urban warfare at "combat towns" built at Camp Pendleton and other bases, there was no place for pilots to practice locating and bombing urban targets, he said.

"Can't bomb San Francisco, so what can you bomb?" Usry asked.

His answer was Yodaville.

It has 54 large structures, some as tall as 38 feet, and 193 smaller ones. Streetlights, a dozen junked cars, some trucks and four scarred tanks add realism. And Yodaville has residents -- stick figures made from metal reinforcing bars and dressed in civilian garb or military uniforms.

This week, Miramar-based Hornet jets and Cobra helicopter gunships from Camp Pendleton -- along with Yuma-based Harrier jump jets -- dropped bombs, launched missiles and fired cannon at Yodaville, which covers an area about 1,000 feet by 800 feet.

Lasers, aimed by Marines hunkered down about 1,200 yards away, marked the targets for the jets and choppers.

Where inert bombs hit their targets, 18-inch holes were punched in the metal structures. Misses were marked by little craters blasted from the sand.

An entourage of generals, headed by Dake, toured Yodaville earlier this week for a few minutes, inspecting the ersatz buildings and stick-figure residents.

Later, they sat on folding chairs inside an air-conditioned trailer to watch the exercise's finale on TV screens.

Much like the Pentagon briefings during the air war over Yugoslavia, the brass watched grainy black-and-white infrared pictures of bombing and strafing runs over the town.

Like armchair quarterbacks, they judged and reviewed each puff of smoke marking the drop of blue practice bombs or the sandy clouds lofted by the rat-tat-tat of cannon.

Some bombs hit, others missed.

A lieutenant colonel told the group that Yodaville had already yielded some answers, such as problems with using lasers to mark urban targets and the need for more accurate laser-guided practice bombs; they hit two buildings but missed six others.

More lessons will be learned during the next six months as Marine pilots study the best ways to bomb and strafe their new town.

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