One might think that settling wherever one desires corresponds to the American dream of shaping one’s own destiny. Tragically, this dream is bifurcated by the structural inequality that pervades US society, resulting in unequal opportunity and uneven development. This becomes a matter of life and death in a disaster and shapes who can respond and recover and who can’t. This year’s California wildfires are a case in point, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. How did modernization facilitate this disaster, and what can be done to remedy this perfect storm?
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Wildfires are, again, raging in California and its neighboring states. Since climate change contributes to an increase in the frequency and intensity of these wildfires, more communities are impacted in greater ways and more firefighters need to be on duty for longer periods of time across ever-greater stretches of land on fire. The people of the American West are dealing with a massive disaster, all the while the underlying environmental, spatial, institutional context is fragmenting, changing, mutating. However, we can only start talking about possible remedies once we disentangle the relevant socio-cultural ingredients.
The relevant socio-cultural ingredients
This also offers planners and designers of the built environment an opportunity to better understand how their work relates to the cycle of disaster management and its phases of planning, preparedness, response, recovery and reconstruction. The institutional aspects of this are firmly rooted in the structure of US government and its federal, state, and local levels, and are related to legislature, funding and skilled personnel who implement plans and programs. The aim is to enable those who are impacted by disasters triggered by wildfires to respond, recover and rebuild in ways that prepare them for possible future disasters.
The spatial aspects encompass where people live and work: from the vast landscape to the individual home, from buildings to blocks, from neighborhoods to settlements, conurbations and cities to metropolises. The social aspects begin with individual resources and extend to evacuation provisions and available funds for rebuilding, against the background of physical harm, psychological trauma and political marginalization. Is this mutating system even capable of recovering after the wildfires in a way that is sustainable and enables adaptation to future disasters?
California Wildfires: Why wildfire disasters happen
On 16 November 2020 President-Elect Joe Biden publicly expressed his intention to make US cities more climate resilient, to benefit communities of color and minorities living in these cities, to build back better. His speech was music to the ears of a global audience, breathing a sigh of relief. By then, a record area of land had been on fire in the Western US states, impacting hundreds of thousands of people. Biden’s speech struck at the heart of the dilemma that disaster management in the US is faced with: that a recovery enabling adaptation to future climate and environmental crises is contingent upon enabling socially vulnerable population groups – among them minorities – to cope with them.
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The precondition is to accept that a return to normal is insufficient, that inclusion is adamant for sustainable planning to succeed and that cities bear the brunt when post-disaster rebuilding fails. However, in the case of wildfires, it is necessary to look beyond the borders of the city. The postmodern geographies of settlement, with Californian urbanization as its prime example, clearly show how modernism chewed up the historic city – initially modeled after its European predecessors – and spewed it out across the countryside, creating the urbanized region in its wake.
This American rendition of “living in the park”, a mass-produced image of the Jeffersonian ideal of rural land ownership, constitutes a postmodern arrangement of functionally separated and socially stratified urban fragments across the wilderness. While it may have brought the spatial logic of its time to its highest possible fruition, this form of quasi-, sub-, and post-urbanization appears inadequate to address current environmental challenges such as wildfires, drought and climate change. The broken pieces of this mutating system are desperately seeking reconciliation.
California’s geography is “built to burn, to burn explosively”
California’s geography is “built to burn, to burn explosively”. With nearly 40 million residents, it is the most populous state of the US and the third largest by area. It comprises two of the nation’s major cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The climate, while mostly Mediterranean, is very diverse, ranging from subtropical to polar. The terrain is similarly diverse and includes rainforests and arid deserts as well as mountains and agricultural landscapes that display a dangerously high demand for water. For the most part, wildfires occur close to human settlements and tend to be caused by human action. Only a fraction are due to natural circumstances such as lightning. The most extensive wildfires to-date have occurred since the turn of the millennium, during years with notably high temperatures and unusual droughts….
Read the full text with all references in topos 113.
Coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the world. For humans, this means: standstill, pause, so that the spread is slowed down. The crisis is currently changing our lives to an extent that we have never experienced before. Emily Schlickman, assistant professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis reports on how the lockdown and the stay-at-home-orders are having an impact on urban life in Davis, California. The Golden State is on pause.
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On March 17th seven million people were ordered to shelter-in-place in the state of California.
On March 18th that number tripled to 21 million.
On March 19th it became 40 million.
Today, every resident of California is required to stay at home indefinitely, as there is no official termination date for the order. Exceptions to the mandate include residents working in “critical infrastructure sectors”, as defined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and residents embarking on “essential” errands like grocery shopping, caring for a loved one, or accessing healthcare. Residents can still go outside, but must stay at least six feet away from others.
Do we know how wide this hurricane really is?
This tactic, one of the strongest in the United States, is a last ditch effort to flatten the curve in a state where COVID-19 has been projected to potentially infect 56% of residents over the course of just eight weeks. Many have compared this anxious waiting period to the brace of an impending hurricane, but perhaps this analogy isn’t quite right. Do we know how wide this hurricane really is? Do we know its average wind speed? Do we know where the “eye” is? Or if an “eye” even exists? For the most part, this is an invisible storm and it has already made landfall, lurking in our communities far longer than we even know.
So what are the urban implications of this pandemic pause? Here, in Davis, California, a college town located between San Francisco and Sacramento, real-time data to help answer this question is hard to come by. But we do have a few clues.
Physically on pause
En route to a pharmacy a few days ago, I snapped some photos of the city as it was bracing for the unknown. The images that came from this exercise are only remarkable in what is missing from their frames: social life. The city had not only metaphorically and legally paused, it had paused physically. This is what I observed.
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Buses that typically carry over 50 passengers per hour, had only one or two riders. Downtown parking lots that are often at capacity, were more than 75% vacant. Bike counters were registering just 25% of a typical daily tally, bike racks were empty, and shared bikes had completely disappeared (I found out later that they had been pulled from the streets for fear of contributing to the spread). I saw just one Uber, which, after a quick check on my phone, was one of two car-share vehicles in the city. About 70% of the downtown businesses had closed their doors. The rest had turned over their furniture to deter people from lingering. In the pharmacy, many of the shelves were empty. All antibacterial soap, hand sanitizer and toilet paper were out of stock.
Davis, like many other communities across California, is unaware of what the next few days, weeks, or months might bring. In the meantime, we will remain on pause.
Seven months later … still on pause
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across California. Experts say the true number of people infected is unknown and likely much higher than official tallies. Currently, the number of infected persons is 919,930, almost one million.
After a fitful start, California has increased coronavirus testing in the state. Over the last week, an average of 133,997 tests have been conducted each day. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
There is still no normal situation as before the pandemic in sight. The number of daily new infections is still very high. At the same time, pressure on the government is increasing due to the precarious economic situation of restaurants and cultural sites.
The Department of Public Health is working with the restaurant industry to develop health and safety guidelines for the reopening. California has established color-coded tiers for reopening. San Francisco is now in the red zone, the second most-restricted tier, indicating transmission of the virus is substantial. City officials said restaurants can reopen for indoor dining when cities move into the less-restrictive orange tier. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
