Site-specific shallow shear-wave velocity ( Vs ) has long been recognized as a key element affecting earthquake site response ( e.g. , Borcherdt 1970). The use of Vs in assessing site response in urban seismic hazard investigations is rapidly coming to the forefront of research ( e.g. , Cramer 2003; Cramer et al. 2004; Frankel et al. 2007, 2009). Vs is also an important parameter in building codes (ICC 2006) and in design applications by the earthquake engineering community (Kramer 1996). As such, the need for rapid, accurate, and inexpensive collection of shallow Vs over large urban sedimentary basins is becoming critical for urban hazard mapping and earthquake-effects investigations. In general, borehole logging has been considered the standard for obtaining Vs data; however, drilling and logging to the depths generally required for earthquake ground-motion investigations is expensive, environmentally invasive, and particularly problematic to conduct within urban areas. This, in part, has led to the development of numerous surface methods capable of estimating site specific Vs 30 (average Vs to 30 m). In this study, we use two inexpensive and non-invasive surface seismic methods as alternatives to drilling and borehole logging. The two methods are active-source (4-kg sledgehammer) body-wave refraction/reflection and the passive-source refraction microtremor (ReMi) method (Louie 2001). In a comparison between refraction/reflection interpretations and borehole logging results, Williams et al. (2003, 2005) found that the velocity structures derived from these methods determined similar layer thickness, layer Vs , and Vs 30 despite significant differences in the sampled subsurface area. In a blind comparison of ReMi results with those from borehole logging at four sites, Stephenson et al. (2005) found that the ReMi method generally matched the borehole results to within 15 percent, or better, for average Vs estimates to depths of 30, 50, and 100 m. We describe the …