Why do people build cities and towns around active volcanoes in places like Italy, Chile, Indonesia, etc.?

Question

Why do people build cities and towns around active volcanoes in places like Italy, Chile, Indonesia, etc.?

Answer 1

why do people build towns on fault lines?

why do people build towns on eroding mountains and hills?

why do people build towns below sea level?

why do people build towns on landfill? near fault lines?  and eroding hills?

we're kind of dumb.

Answer 2

Volcanic ash makes very fertile soil.  Cities are the natural result of the increased productivity.  Large eruptions occur infrequently and there are often many generations of people living around them between the large eruptions.

Answer 3

Some people just want to experience the thrill of running away from a mountain erupting liquid hot magma while it destroys their house.

Answer 4

Besides fertile soil, many cultures developed a mythology of a god/godess/spirit living in the mountain and may choose to live nearby believing the g/g/s will protect and reward them (and in the case of erruptions, punish them).

Answer 5

Vulcanism makes the soil very fertile and excellent for farming purposes, most settlements are agrarian.

Answer 6

Because we're NOT as smart as we look!

Answer 7

You forgot the volcanoes in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington State. Then there's "Tornado Alley" in the Midwest and the Gulf States where hurricanes come ashore on a regular basis. What about Southern California with the potential to have huge earthquakes? Living in low lying coastal areas means Tsunamis could come ashore at anytime. Each years we see repeated scenes of flooding as rivers overflow their banks.Then no place is really safe from global warming, the depleted ozone layer and who knows what else.

Volcanoes do provide some of the best soil for agriculture. Periodic eruptions renew the soil. Then there's often centuries between eruptions. Most eruptions give some warning so people living nearby can leave. Pompeii is the classic example of a city being buried by a volcano. Just how many other cases do you know? When excavated, one question was "Where are all the bodies?" Given the size of the population it appears the majority escaped the eruption.

Humans tend to see the immediate benefits and discount the potential of disaster sometime long into the future.