Although the flames are still burning, the drive to quickly restore the two devastated communities to their former state has become a political imperative.
First of all Governor Gavin NewsomThen Los Angeles Mayor Karen BassIt issued directives designed to speed up the reconstruction of damaged and destroyed homes by removing bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles.
While that commitment is urgent for many, there are critics among architects, urban planners and academics who see public officials as slow to act and think more deliberately about how to make communities more resilient to future fires — and contribute more to the region. Affordable housing needs.
“If we were to recreate it the way it was, it would certainly be a missed opportunity,” said Liz Falletta, an architect and professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. “It's a missed opportunity to think about these things differently.”
More bluntly, former LA City Council legislative analyst and now acerbic critic of City Hall, Mark Ryavec, has called for “stopping rebuilding without examining what happened in the first place and using the lessons that can be learned to reform building codes” in the Palisades. Significantly increases the capacity of the local firefighting water system.”
He said in an opinion piece that the orders would “allow property owners to begin rebuilding more quickly” — with the same building materials and fire safety requirements that failed to protect more than 10,000 homes.
Unlike many past disasters that randomly tore apart communities, taking out one house and leaving the next intact, the Palisades and Eaton fires – in destroying entire neighborhoods – created blank slates that could be rebuilt from the ground up.
Away from the urban core and in semi-rural settings, both communities, despite their dramatic demographic differences, have developed strong identities and share a singularity that makes them vulnerable.
In addition to focusing on fire-resistant construction, ideas to redesign both communities include creating more common space and greater distance between homes, improving street patterns, and replacing popular but fire-prone plants.
Studies have shown that California oaks, for example, are better able to absorb volcanic eruptions than staples like eucalyptus and palm, says Alexandra Seifert, a senior research scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute in Oregon.
Change can come through land-use innovations such as building code improvements that emerge after these fires, buying out landowners unwilling to rebuild, and shifting restrictions and development rights to investors.
A recurring theme is the addition of multifamily housing to make communities more economically diverse and alleviate the region's affordable housing shortage.
In California Planning and Development Report, Proposed by Contributing Editor Josh Stephens Addition of two and three storey apartments For the Palisades business district, the side streets are “filled with shops, cafes and small offices that are, for lack of a better word, much nicer than California's typical commercial strip.
“If European cities are any guide, it can come back even more alive and more inspiring than it once was,” Stephens wrote.
Doval Myers, an expert on urban development and social change at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, does not recommend delay.
“The situation at home is very desperate and we don't want any confusion,” Myers said.
But he argues for greater density.
“You really have to have multiple families,” he said. “LA is suburban density built off the ocean. It's not possible for the 21st Century City.”
Myers, who lives near the Altadena fire zone, said she thinks her community would welcome it, especially if it's designed to be affordable for seniors and young families.
“It will be a socially desirable and engaging trade,” he said.
“I don't think you want to threaten the heart of their neighborhood, but certainly in commercial corridors, why not put more families there.”
Among these commentators, however, there was a general pessimism about the possibility of their ideas being realized.
“We still have the forces that made it hard to do new and different things in the past — insurance and mortgage underwriting standards, planning and zoning, risk-averse developers, NIMBYism,” Falletta said.
“The hard part is making everyone financially and emotionally whole,” said former Ventura Mayor Bill Fulton, now an adjunct professor in the Urban Studies and Planning and Design Lab at UC San Diego.
Fulton compares the situation to the 1991 Oakland Hills fire that destroyed nearly 3,000 single-family homes. An immediate call to ban rebuilding on the same site stumbled under a barrage of TV coverage of people who had lost everything.
Often, there will be property owners in both Pacific Palisades and Altadena who, if they were insured, decide to take their insurance money and move elsewhere. (A 2018 state law prevents the insurance industry's previous practice from requiring policyholders to rebuild on the same site.)
Stephanie Pinsetl, a professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, sees applying their properties as leverage for social change. transfer of development rights, or TDR, a process in which a property owner sells the right to rebuild to a developer who is allowed to build above the permitted density elsewhere, such as in the commercial district of the Palisades.
“Rebuilding in one place and on a larger scale, in the same way, is not in the public interest,” Pinzel said.
Development rights transfers have become a key component in the recovery of Paradise, California, a hillside town that was almost completely destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire.
Heaven A study was commissioned The new community found that it could reduce its fire risk by 75% with three layers of protection: exterior buffering of non-flammable vegetation, selective retrofitting in low-fire areas, and compliance of individual homes with a wildfire program designed by an insurance company for commercial & home security.
The city is seeking state and federal grants to buy vacant properties and has received donations from owners who decided not to return.
“We want you to know that there is another jurisdiction, and you're not alone,” said Paradise Irrigation District Manager Kevin Phillips.
Fulton said he doubts the TDR process will work in Los Angeles because new city and state laws already provide density bonuses to spur development.
“You could theoretically buy some people if they were willing to sell, and build something taller,” Fulton said. “You must have money.”
Ryavec proposes that the city come up with money to buy mini fire breaks, more fire stations and sites for reservoirs.
How these ideas are received in society may vary.
Barbara Freud, chair of the Westside Neighborhood Council's land use committee, decries density advocates who seek to eliminate zoning for single-family homes and those neighborhoods. That agenda continues to rest beneath the surface of many of these conversations.
“This is not the time for ideologues to prevail,” said Martin Muoto, founder and chief executive of the affordable housing developer. Sola Impact, His Palisades home burned to the ground.
Muoto said he could envision new apartments to provide affordable housing for some of the domestic workers who work in the Palisades business district.
“Gelson's, for example, could be rebuilt for ground-floor grocery and three or four floors of affordable housing,” he said.
But he sees any lot-swap plan as a threat. The Comfortable and wealthy residents Palisades is important to the city's tax base and cultural life, but they have options, he said. LA would be poorer if they gave up the city in large numbers.
“I personally know half a dozen people who are discussing moving to a second home in Utah or a second home in Colorado,” he said. “We don't want them to run away. We don't want them to go to Florida.
“Giving certainty, clarity and speed to families devastated by tragedy is critical to my position,” Muoto said.
In Altadena, Town Council President Victoria Knapp worries that longtime residents will abandon the community, but her concern focuses on speculators offering lowball concessions. Low-income Black and Latino families It may be hard to deny.
“We have multi-generational families that own land together,” Knapp said. “If they sell it all, they can go somewhere else and start over.”
Knapp said he thinks the community will welcome multi-family housing if it's in the right location, especially in small-business areas scattered throughout the community.
“It's possible,” she said. “But we have to plan for it. We're deciding soon what Altadena 2.0 will look like, but it's not too soon to prevent it from being something we don't want.
The goals of rebuilding to protect against future fires and serve broader civic interests are seen as unrelated or conflicting, said Sybart of the Biological Conservation Institute.
“We have a housing crisis in California,” Sybart said. “When it comes to fire-safe homes, people talk about them in two different conversations. We need to start bringing them into one conversation.
