Abstract
Natural disasters seem to provide unique opportunities for correcting planning problems and accelerating urban design initiatives. For a city on a fault line, a massive earthquake promises to deliver an urban tabula rasa: a blank slate on which a contemporary vision of an ideal city can be mapped out. However, as the examples of San Francisco in 1905 and Napier in 1931 demonstrate, the real possibilities for reconstruction are far more limited. While it is rare for a ruined city to be restored exactly to its former state, it is equally unusual for natural disasters to generate grand new urban designs.
