Parts of which of these are built on soft landfill or poorly consolidated soil?

Concept: A comprehension question is settled inside the passage itself, never from outside knowledge. The method is to isolate the defining phrase used in the stem, find the one sentence of the passage that carries that phrase, and then read off the noun phrase to which it is grammatically attached. A relative clause of the form "parts of which are ..." always modifies the noun phrase standing immediately before it.

Application:

1. The defining phrase in the stem is "built on soft landfill or poorly consolidated soil".

2. That phrase occurs in the passage in a single sentence: "Cities such as Kobe, Japan or Mexico City, parts of which are built on soft landfill or poorly consolidated soil, usually suffer the greatest damage from earthquakes."

3. "parts of which are built on soft landfill or poorly consolidated soil" is a relative clause, and the noun phrase standing immediately before it is "Cities such as Kobe, Japan or Mexico City".

4. The places whose parts stand on soft landfill or poorly consolidated soil are therefore Kobe, Japan and Mexico City.

Cross-check with the other places the passage names:

• Indonesia is named for the 2004 Banda Aceh earthquake and tsunami, which killed over 230,000 people, and the passage attaches no description of the ground to it.

• Pakistan is named for the earthquake that followed less than a year later and killed 80,000 people, again with no soil description attached.

• Since neither country is described in terms of landfill or soil consolidation, neither one alone nor the two of them together satisfies the stem.

Result: Kobe, Japan and Mexico City. The passage also explains why such ground matters: water-saturated soil can liquefy when shaken, so buildings standing on it sometimes sink out of sight or fall down like a row of dominoes.