The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Bushfires and sprawl: Man-made catastrophes and cultural narratives

The lethal mixture of home ownership and the bush: Neighborhoods on fire.
"Since 1993. almost half of California’s new homes have been built in fire hazard areas...Commercial greed over common sense and the social good."

The aristocratisation of the coast
"In a feverish buying and selling of land, the coast has become utterly transformed and unrecognizable. Each succeeding house, bigger and grander, takes the view of its neighbors in a kind of unbridled competition.… Once lost, paradise can never be regained.… Developers have bulldozed the Santa Monicas beyond recovery."
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Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: The Case for Letting Malibu Burn. 1998
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/

Ecology of Fear: Mike Davis’ history of LA and natural disaster is re-read whenever fire rages in California >>
https://theconversation.com/ecology-of-fear-mike-davis-history-of-la-and-natural-disaster-is-re-read-whenever-fire-rages-in-california-247101
#bushfires #fires #firestorms #sprawl #housing #suburbs #mansions #OverDevelopment #coast #NSW #destruction #disasters #gridlocked #roads #highways #floods #landslides #WUI #FossilFuels #Biodiversity #Holocene #folly

Bushfires and the 15-kilometre traffic jam
Dangerous fires and bottlenecks when fleeing bushfires

"There will be people caught in their cars, trying to get out of the area...When wildfires tore through the county of Maui in Hawaii earlier this month, leaving more than 100 people dead, some whom perished in their cars on the gridlocked road out of the town."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-25/wollondilly-residents-road-upgrades-bushfire-traffic-bottleneck/102776522
#planning #sprawl #ExitRoutes #FossilFuel #bushfires #risks #cars #traffic #roads #gridlocked #Bellingen #WaterfallWay