California's future depends on how leaders rebuild after the Los Angeles fires

Thinking only flat areas are ripe for high-density urbanism is still a NIMBY mentality. Where I'm from there were much worse constraints yet the rate of growth by which cities are developed vastly outclasses the YIMBYest cities in the US let alone California.

There should be respect to the families that lost their property. But it's not insulting to suggest that NIMBY development exarcebates disasters like this. Heck if land use was as productive as it should in America most of those families wouldn't have a good chunk of their wealth evaporates as a result of a natural disaster, and rebuilding would've been hella more faster and cheaper.

It seems to me that right solution is to upzone Altadena. Small apartment buildings work fine in dense suburbs.

The other part is that if can’t upzone Palisades to upzone other areas instead. It makes sense to build denser close to transit than force it on rich areas in the hills.

It was also just destroyed by fire so probably a bad idea to rebuild there.

"You can't build dense buildings on a mountain side"

What are you talking about?!? Downtown San Francisco has easily 4x the density of the area and it's built on mountains. Italy has dense villages on the sides of mountains all over the place. The idea that nobody can build density in 2025 because of some type of geological feature is just ridiculous, self-serving, nothing should change ever talk.

LA is one of the most car-centric cities I've ever seen. "we can have less parking" would require a fundamental shift in culture.

Doing it right after a major fire where people are alive precisely because they were able to put themselves and a few belongings into their personal vehicle and go where they could shelter with friends or family is bordering on an impossible ask.

Malibu and the Palisades were exclusive neighborhoods where celebrities and other well-off industry personnel lived. They're not adding low income apartments or execute any urbanist pipe-dream for the same reason they're not bulldozing Pac Heights to install homeless shelters. Not going to happen. Ever.

The reason modern apartments in LA cost an arm and a leg is the same one for why new houses are no longer starter homes but McMansions.

We shouldn’t rebuild at all in many of these places.

Density is an imperative for Los Angeles, and big sprawl-y cities generally. And we're building density! DTLA is getting more residential, train stops are getting surrounded by everything from 5+1s to superblocks, Santa Monica is getting taller, ...

That global imperative does not translate into a local demand that every SFH (and in particular, these SFHs) be replaced with denser housing. As you realize in your comment, the damaged areas aren't exactly well-positioned to support substantially denser housing.

These are the palisades though so very hilly with lots of great views. I can't really imagine building apartments up there, and they are really not very centrally located anyways, not like lower Brentwood or most of Santa Monica.

Even Hong Kong builds mostly between its hills and only on them when really rich people are involved (e.g. Victoria Peak).

Everyone wants to rebuild in accordance with their favorite urban planning theory.

Very few want to give developers the profits they need to match the profits they get rebuilding in accordance with maximizing the return on their investments.

People asking for cheap apartments are just not being realistic. Why rent that square footage at less than luxury prices when the market will readily eat up the square footage at prices far exceeding the national luxury median?

And that’s before we even get to the people who want condos or luxury homes.

You would basically need to make a law that caps how much an owner can make on his land for some of these ideas to work.

Most rural houses in Australia are built this way. They still burn down.

I don't think anyone really understands how intense wildfires can get when fanned by wind. It will destroy almost anything.

See: Black Saturday bushfires, Australia.

> "it really made no difference whether the houses were brick or timber. In fact, with the speed of the fire front some timber houses fared better than brick as it moved too fast for the houses to catch, but the bricks exploded from the sudden change in temperature."

> "When you have a fire front coming through at 800C it'll melt your window seals and aluminum window frames. The glass will fall out then everything is on fire.

Would cinder blocks and concrete be a good fit for standing up to the earthquakes that California is prone to?

A useful alternative would be the Longreads article from 2018, discussing the history of the region that burned and how it was known to be a fire danger from the beginning (and has burned every so often as predicted):

https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu...

> The 1930 Decker Canyon fire was a worst-case scenario involving 50-year-old chaparral and a fierce Santa Ana. Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames

> Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936, and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon, public officials stubbornly disregarded

> He also provided a classic account of the onslaught of the terrible firestorm of Christmas week 1956, which, burning its way to the sea, retraced the path of the 1930 blaze.

And identifies that the policy of colonizing wildfire-prone zones with single family homes was set in the late 50s:

> By declaring Malibu a federal disaster area and offering blaze victims tax relief as well as preferential low-interest loans, the Eisenhower administration established a precedent for the public subsidization of firebelt suburbs.

Fires continued, of course, like clockwork:

> The next firestorm, in late September 1970, coupled perfect fire weather (drought conditions, 100-degree heat, 3 percent humidity, and an 85-mile-per-hour Santa Ana wind) with a bumper crop of combustible wood-frame houses. According to firefighters, the popular cedar shake roofs “popped like popcorn” as a 20-mile wall of flames roared across the ridgeline of the Santa Monicas toward the sea

And so on. So I wouldn’t say it’s “too early” for political takes on reconstruction; this debate — Oh No Fires! What Next For Zoning? — has been going on for almost one hundred years, even if it’s news to the current decade that this was ever a risk.

Oakland just shut down 2 Fire Stations in the hills where the risk of fires is the highest, with up to 7 more on the horizon due to budget cuts.

https://www.kqed.org/news/12021505/a-tragedy-waiting-to-happ...

In fact the station that responded first to the fires of last October was the one cut.

https://oaklandside.org/2024/10/22/oakland-budget-cuts-firef...

The government officials argue that there is no money, but in reality, almost every department is seeing budget increases other than the fire department. The city administrators are getting 3x the money than last budget. California leaders are the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Edit: this just from yesterday https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/response-time-for-oaklan...

It’s the same story in every place where elections are won through political machines that mobilize voters along ethnic lines (e.g. Chicago, New York City, etc.) Whoever controls the political machine will win the elections, regardless of competency. And to be clear this isn’t a red versus blue thing—even within the parties, specific factions control the machines.

When you keep rewarding bad decisions by voting for the same people such that they have a monopoly on elected offices, there really isn't a duty or motivation to perform well at their job. This isn't unique to California but it's one of the worst examples.

Democratic state majority since Reagan and California still can't get anything done.

You think that building housing for more people won’t help the people who are looking for housing.

The vacant homes count any vacancy even if they are for sale or between tenants. It is impossible to use those for housing. And putting people in them means that normal buyer and tenants couldn’t live there.

Rent is a market and landlords can only charge what people can pay. More cheaper housing will drive down rents, or more likely slow down rent growth since prices are sticky.

Building more homes would make existing home less valuable but would make the land under the homes more valuable cause could be used for more valuable housing. I also think that remaining houses will be more valuable for people who want house over apartment.

> Aren't there like millions of uninhabited homes?

No. Certainly not in places where people want to live.

Why would you think there are? Why would someone deliberately let their property deprecate while not earning an income, (setting aside the unearned speculation caused by land values increasing)

LA has about 2-3% empty homes. Higher than some global cities, but still a very small number.

"And don't ask how someone on medium income can put 50% down on a $800k home)."

I believe there are a lot of families that pass down wealth, most of it being used to buy houses.