Graduation date: 2007This study examined two neighborhoods in San Francisco with similar earthquake-induced ground failure history -- the Marina District and the South of Market Area (SoMa) -- in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake struck shortly after 5 pm on October 17th, 1989 and registered 6.9 in magnitude, killing 64 people and causing $6 billion in damage. The recovery of the two neighborhoods proceeded at different rates and along dissimilar paths, with the Marina reappearing much the same following a relatively rapid reconstruction, while SoMa’s pre-earthquake social and economic problems worsened in the aftermath of the earthquake. This study identified possible factors affecting these different rates including uneven coverage in newspaper media, different pre-earthquake socio-economic make up and different pre-earthquake property types and values. Analysis of the 1989 earthquake, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and other disasters such as 2004’s Hurricane Katrina is supplemented by theoretical arguments on ethnicities during disaster, the role of the media in disaster and social processes of recovery during and after disaster to help explain how the physical and social geography of these neighborhoods shaped their earthquake experience.