Where the Sidewalk Starts: City planning contribute to California’s wildfires

The sky is forever a dingy gray. Asthmatics have to limit their time outside, and parents worry about their kids’ developing lungs. It seems smoke is forever in the air; it seems California is always on fire and it seems like we are out of time to be proactive about it.

The reason we see such massive destruction of homes and towns every time there’s a fire is because we weren’t proactive about it. City and regional planning departments, private developers and voting citizens all keep pushing their cities’ limits. Additionally, we keep moving into places that we shouldn’t be moving into.

Forest fires are a natural phenomenon. Fires can clear the way in a forest for new, young plants. But nowadays, the National Parks Service reports that nearly 85% of forest fires are anthropogenic — started because cigarette butts were left burning or campfires were left unattended. We aren’t learning from our mistakes in accidentally setting fires.

We also aren’t learning to prevent the harm fires bring. Something that seems to go unnoticed: Fires are burning through the same places. Santa Rosa was hit by the Tubbs fire in 2017. Today, the Kincade fire rages near that same area. Cities should reconsider where they are allowing people to build, in addition to building and zoning codes.

Like Farhad Manjoo, a columnist from The New York Times points out, the solution to preventing fire destruction is simple. We need to live more densely. If we made our cities’ cores more sustainable and able to support a greater number of people, there wouldn’t be a need to expand into areas where wildlife and vegetation are fire prone or high risk. 

But building density takes time, and it takes forethought that Southern California lacked at the start of the last century. Urban development was expensive. So suburbanization happened, bringing many other infrastructures that contributed to a cycle of sprawl  — a highway system, a dependency on cars, an excess of parking and infrastructure that could be used for homes. 

So we pushed further and further out into areas that are at risk of fires, and at the corners and edges of our suburbs, fires spark. One-fourth of Californians live in areas that are at “high risk” for wildfire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Since we can’t go back in time to reconsider exactly where to situate our cities — and we can’t displace the high number of people who live in fire-prone zones — the next best thing is to start planning for density from here on out. We can educate those who live in risk areas, create the most sustainable urban infrastructures and be mindful of future expansion.

Los Angeles is taking small steps toward change, in ways that aren’t blatantly fire-fighting, but are mindful of those aforementioned goals. Its 35 community plans — all of which cover different sections of L.A. — are under revision, and safety and conservation are both top priorities of the revision process.

One specific change seems far-flung from preventing fires, but actually reconsiders land use in a way that allows for more density. The revised Downtown Community Plan, released by L.A. City Planning last week, eliminates parking minimums downtown. This means that developments no longer have mandatory off-street parking. 

In a city that has excess parking space, this is significant. In a study published by the Journal of the American Planning Association, there were an estimated 18.6 million parking spaces in L.A. County in 2010, which is 3.3 spaces for each of the 5.6 million vehicles in L.A. County. Though parking won’t be removed, new developments can do without excess parking spots. And that land can be used to build housing, retail, offices — spaces that densify a city and do not promote a car-centric culture.

This is just a little step that means much more for the future. Planning for density requires forethought. We had none, so now we need to start small. We need to learn from our mistakes and the ruin we’ve seen. We need to advocate for denser, human-oriented development. Most importantly,  we need to keep our communities safe from fires.

Breanna de Vera is a junior writing about urban planning. Her column, “Where the Sidewalk Starts” runs every other Monday.