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On April 18, 1906, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook the San Francisco region, igniting fires that burned half the city. The disaster in all its elements – earthquake, fires, and recovery – profoundly disrupted the urban order and challenged San Francisco’s perceived permanence.
The crisis broke down spatial divisions of class and race and heightened debates about the urban environment and equity in an era of widespread class conflict, simmering ethnic tensions, and controversial reform efforts. From a proposal to expel Chinatown from the city center to a vision of San Francisco paved with concrete in the name of sanitation, the process of reconstruction required urban residents to reenvision the places of people and nature alike. In their zeal to restore the city, San Franciscans downplayed the role of the earthquake, leading them to choose patterns of development that only exacerbated seismic risk.
In this close study of the famous earthquake, Joanna L. Dyl examines the decades leading up to the earthquake and the contested efforts to rebuild the city. Combining urban environmental history and disaster studies, Seismic City demonstrates how the crisis and recovery reflected the dynamic interplay of natural and human forces that have shaped San Francisco.
“Seismic City is among the best accounts I’ve read of the endlessly fascinating San Francisco earthquake, fire, and aftermath. What’s more, Dyl’s got style – it’s fun to learn how, 111 years later, this event continues to offer lessons for the world we live in today.”
– Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All
“Dyl’s Seismic City is the best history of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 you’ll ever read. Dyl demonstrates how wrongheaded it is to label this tragedy a ‘natural disaster,’ revealing the social and cultural underpinnings of one of the worst calamities in the history of the United States.”
– Ari Kelman, University of California, Davis
Reviews of Seismic City:
“The Potential for Peril Built into San Francisco,” by Shari Wilcox, Edge Effects