The Legacy of Urban Land Use: Redevelopment in San Francisco After the 1906 Disaster

Natural disasters that destroy urban areas leave opportunities to adapt city environments to contemporary needs. Since it is costly for developers to adapt durable buildings to changing economic conditions, such investments can be a significant factor in determining urban growth and development patterns over time. Exploiting the 1906 San Francisco fire as a natural-experiment setting in which the city's building stock was exogenously reduced, this dissertation examines three urban outcomes before and after the disaster using the fire's boundary as a discontinuity in treatment. These outcomes are the land-use mix, residential density, and firm relocations. Evidence suggests that dramatic changes in San Francisco's land use and structure occurred upon redevelopment following the disaster. Specifically, the land-use mix changed significantly as land acreage made a relative shift away from residential use toward nonresidential use after the fire. Redevelopment of housing resulted in a 40 percent increase in residential density in areas razed by fire relative to unburned areas. Firm locations changed significantly as well, as burned-out firms were more likely to make post-disaster moves to different city blocks relative to firms on unburned blocks, so that the fire increased the likelihood of relocating by at least 30 percentage points. Together, these findings suggest that thriving cities experience substantial rigidities in the form of durable capital investments.