Rebuilding effort

Washington Post: One hundred years ago, in April 1906, San Francisco was destroyed. The earth shook violently for about a minute, and then out of the destruction came fire and more destruction, until most of the city was flattened. Afterward, prudence would seem to have dictated that city-building be done elsewhere than on the San Andreas fault, in which case San Francisco today might be zoned for two-acre lots with nice views and a strictly limited number of tasteful glass-and-wood houses built to code. But the American dream is often an actuary's nightmare, and San Francisco today is, well, San Francisco, only more so, at least until the next earthquake.
Another catastrophe
Ninety-nine years after San Francisco fell and burned, New Orleans was destroyed by wind and, mostly, water. Vast stretches of the city still lie uninhabitable, their residents scattered in distant places while people discuss the possibility of abandoning forever much of what was New Orleans, rather than continuing to try to maintain large communities below sea level. Again, such forsaking would only be prudent, and, again, it probably won't happen.
For while catastrophe in such places evokes for some people biblical images of punishment being visited on the unwise and the wicked, most people -- especially the ones who live in them -- persist in seeing these cities not only as home but as centers of art, commerce, conversation, beauty, creative disorder, frivolity, good food and all the other things that happen when many kinds of people come together and pursue their various visions over the course of several centuries. Perhaps such things can be planned and channeled and neatly ordered, but this isn't really a country given to walling things up in neat compartments. We have thrived on openness and on the idea of opportunity and renewal.
Our freedom is the key to all this, whether to reconstruct a city or just wake up in the New Year resolved to reconstruct ourselves as we see fit.