One thing I didn't notice until the second viewing... most (the vast majority?) of the death and destruction was due to the World Builder, and Clark did the exact right thing to deal with that: He went to the other side of the world and destroyed the machine as quickly as possible. The fight in Smallville was mostly confined to the streets and freight yards, and the final battle with Zod was actually fairly short, and didn't involve a lot of (or any?) buildings collapsing -- condemned, probably, but with time for people to escape.
