The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster

By Lawrence J. Vale

Book Overview

In 1871, the city of Chicago was almost entirely destroyed by what became known as The Great Fire. Thirty-five years later, San Francisco lay in smoldering ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of 1906. Or consider the case of the Jerusalem, the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal in history, which, over three millennia, has suffered wars, earthquakes, fires, twenty sieges, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. Yet this ancient city has regenerated itself time and again, and still endures.
Throughout history, cities have been sacked, burned, torched, bombed, flooded, besieged, and leveled. And yet they almost always rise from the ashes to rebuild. Viewing a wide array of urban disasters in global historical perspective, The Resilient City traces the aftermath of such cataclysms as: --the British invasion of Washington in 1814
--the devastation wrought on Berlin, Warsaw, and Tokyo during World War II
--the late-20th century earthquakes that shattered Mexico City and the Chinese city of Tangshan
--Los Angeles after the 1992 riots
--the Oklahoma City bombing
--the destruction of the World Trade Center
Revealing how traumatized city-dwellers consistently develop narratives of resilience and how the pragmatic process of urban recovery is always fueled by highly symbolic actions, The Resilient City offers a deeply informative and unsentimental tribute to the dogged persistence of the city, and indeed of the human spirit.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195175832
• ISBN13: 9780195175837
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Pretty good

I used this book as a text book in college and found it pretty interesting. I had no idea about a lot of the disasters it talked about so I kept this book after the class had ended instead of trying to sell it again. I probably wouldn't have been interested in the book if it weren't for the class, but after reading it I'm interested. I'd recommend it to people who are interested in disaster stories.

Pompeii and Chernobyl, Banda Aceh or New Orleans ...

Pompeii or Chernobyl, Hiroshima or Dresden, Banda Aceh or New Orleans: Some towns did not come onto the legs after a catastrophe, others rose again. Bombarded or struck by earthquakes, contaminated by radiation or flooded: The inhabitants of every town want the resurrection of her identification object - provided that it is only appropriately feasible. The big fire in Chicago is examined in the book or the earthquake in San Francisco. One looks at the reconstruction of Warsaw and also Berlin after the second World War. Perhaps it makes sense to give up a town like New Orleans, three meters under the sea-level, as a housing area definitely. On the other hand, a tendency of all residents of maltreated towns is to be felt globally, which speaks about to rebuild their symbol object as unchanged as possible. Maybe it is better to manage some variations, considering the presumable future of a city during an alternated reconstruction. Towns are works of art, culture products, how to save their threatened identity? This book will remain currently a long time ...

Pompeii and Chernobyl, Banda Aceh or New Orleans ...

Pompeii or Chernobyl, Hiroshima or Dresden, Banda Aceh or New Orleans: Some towns did not come onto the legs after a catastrophe, others rose again. Bombarded or struck by earthquakes, contaminated by radiation or flooded: The inhabitants of every town want the resurrection of her identification object - provided that it is only appropriately feasible. The big fire in Chicago is examined in the book or the earthquake in San Francisco. One looks at the reconstruction of Warsaw and also Berlin after the second World War. Perhaps it makes sense to give up a town like New Orleans, three meters under the sea-level, as a housing area definitely. On the other hand, a tendency of all residents of maltreated towns is to be felt globally, which speaks about to rebuild their symbol object as unchanged as possible. Maybe it is better to manage some variations, considering the presumable future of a city during an alternated reconstruction. Towns are works of art, culture products, how to save their threatened identity? This book will remain currently a long time ...