It is believed that there is a relation between faults and damaged areas. In other words, the closer the distance between a fault and a building, the higher probability the building may be damaged. Employing the technique of geographical information systems, we analyze the spatial relationship between Chelungpu Fault and damaged building areas in the case of the Chi‐Chi (Taiwan) Earthquake based on the following data sets: (1) maps of fully and partially damaged buildings, which were investigated by the Construction and Planning Administration, Ministry of Interior; (2) maps of existing buildings before the earthquake; (3) zoning maps of 14 urban areas along the fault; (4) the map of Chelungpu Fault at 1:5000, made by the Central Geological Survey, Ministry of Economic Affairs. After making buffer areas at every 5 meters along the fault and calculating proportions of fully and partially damaged buildings to existing buildings in terms of built areas, we find that there is a strong relation between the proportion of fully damaged buildings and the distance from the fault; however, partially damaged buildings and the distance from the fault display no relationship. Furthermore, we find that the proportion of damaged buildings on the eastern side of the fault is higher than on the western side. These observations are further analyzed by fitting transformed normal distribution functions and linear regression functions. The result is very helpful for considering recovery, renewal, and restricted building areas in urban planning.