Poignant remarks about a destroyed city rebuilt but likely to be destroyed anew.
Until recently, my brother lived in a two story home on Market Street. Great view; off street parking.
Despite the occasional shake, rattle and roll events that beset the city over the years -- including a bridge collapse -- he stubbornly stayed aging in place.
No longer. He sold his townhouse and moved to Texas not for tax reasons, but to age near family.
We all felt a measure of relief. The north-south geographic fault that traverses most of California is a sleeping catastrophe
Agreed. I lived for years in San Francisco and loved it at the time. For various reasons, I wouldn’t live there now. The sleeping San Andreas is one of them. Only a matter of time before it wakes up.
The day after the quake, my father’s family sailed into the the San Francisco harbor, having survived the four month voyage from NYC. My Grandfather was eight years old at the time. Two years earlier the family survived the voyage from Stockholm to NYC.
My grandfather said they were all excited to finally be ending the voyage and when they came around the point it was nothing but smoke and smoldering buildings.
9 of them lived in a single canvass tent for over a year. Eventually they worked their way down to Alviso where they set up the family’s oyster farm that is Hwy 237 today until it went out of business in the early 1930’s.
Something in this piece stayed with me: disasters are often described as opportunities to start over, but cities rarely receive a genuine blank slate.
San Francisco rebuilt largely within its old pattern because people needed homes, businesses, and normal life back more urgently than they needed a grand new plan. That probably helped preserve much of the city’s identity. But the same urgency also turned rubble into new waterfront land, carrying one disaster forward into the geography of the next.
As a planner, I think that is the uncomfortable side of resilience. Rebuilding quickly can be heroic and still lock in vulnerability. A city may recover its buildings, confidence, and public life while quietly reproducing the conditions that will shape its next catastrophe.
Perhaps ruins do more than show us what a city survived. They also reveal the decisions made when there was no time to think—and how long those decisions can remain embedded in the ground.
Many thanks for your beautiful writing on memorial-day for a devastating event !!! 👍👍👍
Poignant remarks about a destroyed city rebuilt but likely to be destroyed anew.
Until recently, my brother lived in a two story home on Market Street. Great view; off street parking.
Despite the occasional shake, rattle and roll events that beset the city over the years -- including a bridge collapse -- he stubbornly stayed aging in place.
No longer. He sold his townhouse and moved to Texas not for tax reasons, but to age near family.
We all felt a measure of relief. The north-south geographic fault that traverses most of California is a sleeping catastrophe
Agreed. I lived for years in San Francisco and loved it at the time. For various reasons, I wouldn’t live there now. The sleeping San Andreas is one of them. Only a matter of time before it wakes up.
The day after the quake, my father’s family sailed into the the San Francisco harbor, having survived the four month voyage from NYC. My Grandfather was eight years old at the time. Two years earlier the family survived the voyage from Stockholm to NYC.
My grandfather said they were all excited to finally be ending the voyage and when they came around the point it was nothing but smoke and smoldering buildings.
9 of them lived in a single canvass tent for over a year. Eventually they worked their way down to Alviso where they set up the family’s oyster farm that is Hwy 237 today until it went out of business in the early 1930’s.
Wow! What a story. Thank you for sharing.
Something in this piece stayed with me: disasters are often described as opportunities to start over, but cities rarely receive a genuine blank slate.
San Francisco rebuilt largely within its old pattern because people needed homes, businesses, and normal life back more urgently than they needed a grand new plan. That probably helped preserve much of the city’s identity. But the same urgency also turned rubble into new waterfront land, carrying one disaster forward into the geography of the next.
As a planner, I think that is the uncomfortable side of resilience. Rebuilding quickly can be heroic and still lock in vulnerability. A city may recover its buildings, confidence, and public life while quietly reproducing the conditions that will shape its next catastrophe.
Perhaps ruins do more than show us what a city survived. They also reveal the decisions made when there was no time to think—and how long those decisions can remain embedded in the ground.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.