Large-Scale Retreat from Fire Not an Option

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Liz Koslov, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin and UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, co-authored a New York Times opinion piece on the path forward after recent wildfires in Los Angeles. Koslov and co-author Kathryn McConnell of the University of British Columbia address questions about the wisdom of rebuilding and whether “managed retreat” from wildfire is even a realistic alternative. “We need a serious discussion of how to live with fire in this new era,” they write. The notion of “let it burn” is not a “realistic or humane response to the destruction of homes and communities — in either urban or rural places.” Retreat from fire risk is “a fantasy” and could, in some places, increase the danger, according to the scholars, who have published research on managed retreat from wildfire. What they do recommend is greater investment in preparing buildings as well as community-led experiments in new ways to protect neighborhoods.

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Millard-Ball on Fire, Sprawl and Car Dependency

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Research by UCLA Luskin’s Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, is cited in Next City, Bloomberg and Streetsblog articles on traffic gridlock that occurred amid the devastating fires in Los Angeles. During the fire, motorists evacuating their neighborhoods were forced to abandon their cars, which had to be pushed aside by bulldozers. Millard-Ball’s paper on street-network sprawl, released on Jan. 13, notes that neighborhoods where residents struggled to flee have some of the county’s least connected streets with limited access in or out. Millard-Ball and his colleagues mapped street connectivity, not just in L.A. but worldwide. “We found that the U.S. actually has some of the least connected streets in the world,” they noted. While L.A. does have a generally well-connected grid system, the researchers found exceptions including Pacific Palisades. They added that building the streets back exactly as before would be a lost opportunity to improve disaster preparedness.

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How California Health Programs Could Change Under Trump

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UCLA’s Mark A. Peterson appeared on KQED’s “Forum” to talk about what could happen to California health care programs as the Trump administration takes power. The Republican Party has signaled plans to overhaul the federal Medicaid program, which provides health care for low-income people, possibly leading to billions of dollars in cuts to California. Trump policies could also have major implications for the state’s health insurance marketplace as well as programs addressing homelessness and reproductive health. “The reality is that the delivery of health care is a rescue operation. That’s what we do when people become ill,” said Peterson, a professor of public policy at UCLA Luskin and senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “Well, what if we can prevent people from becoming ill in the first place? Which would be both enhancement for their lives and their economic productivity. It would also mean we’d be spending less on health care.”

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Lens on L.A.’s Spiking Rental Housing Prices During Wildfires

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UCLA Luskin Professor of Public Policy and Urban Planning Michael Lens commented in an LAist story on skyrocketing rental housing prices in Los Angeles amid the region’s devastating wildfires. The article cites examples of online listings nearly doubling since the fires broke out, while thousands of residents who have lost their homes or been displaced are now scrambling to find alternative places to live. California Gov. Gavin Newsom already has imposed an emergency declaration that includes a ban on price gouging — any price increase above 10% of pre-disaster rates. In another LAist story, Lens said homeowners who’ve paid off their mortgages and long-term renters who were paying below market rates could particularly struggle to get back on their feet. “Folks who haven’t had to really think about where they’re going to live next — who may have been living in, fortunately, stable housing situations for the last couple decades — are going to see a lot of sticker shock,” Lens said.

 

L.A.’s Sprawl Into Fire-Prone Areas

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Michael Manville, chair of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Reason about land-use policies that have led to the outward spread of housing in Los Angeles, including into fire-prone areas. For decades, state policymakers have been aware of the risk to homes in the “wildland-urban interface,” the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development, where man-made structures intermingle with vegetation that can fuel fires. Manville says the sprawl arises from “the desire to have … the most in-demand kind of housing, which is a nice little family home with a backyard, [and] you can’t do that without expanding outward.” Nearly 78% of residential land in Greater Los Angeles is reserved for single-family housing, the article notes, impeding any effort to relocate homes from the flammable outskirts toward urban centers. Manville called for zoning reforms to “take these areas that are zoned for very low density and allow them to build four or five units.”

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A Test of Los Angeles’ Fire Preparedness

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Edith de Guzman of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation spoke to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”  about the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles. The program, part of a special series on California wildfires, focused on L.A.’s preparedness for the fires — made worse by Santa Ana wind conditions — which have led to loss of life, burned thousands of structures and displaced thousands of Angelenos. De Guzman said that the past week has tested L.A.’s otherwise high level of fire preparedness. With “embers flying miles apart, fire ignition is extremely difficult to predict or control and it’s happening simultaneously in so many places,” said De Guzman, a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist on water equity and adaptation policy. She added that climate change and the fact that much of L.A.’s housing stock is built with wooden construction for seismic safety have made things worse.