Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, was a guest on a Next City podcast about street gridlock during the Palisades fire, which forced evacuating residents to abandon their vehicles. The program cited research by Millard-Ball and colleagues, discussed in a previous article, where they found that the United States has some of the least connected streets in the world. Ball noted that while Los Angeles is an exception, with a generally well-connected grid system, Pacific Palisades is not. For planners like Millard-Ball, rebuilding in the fire ravaged areas is an opportunity to rethink how L.A.’s streets are designed and work. “If all the traffic that’s coming out has to flow through one or two intersections, that’s a recipe for chaos in an emergency situation,” he said. “This is not what the streets were built for.”