The Changing American West
The Changing American West
From “Flammable Landscape” to the “Incendiary”
This chapter establishes a conceptual justification for the implementation of an affluence-vulnerability interface analytic approach to manage current and prospective suburban landscapes—indeed a major characteristic of the West is the immense amount of land currently still eligible for suburban and exurban conversion. Along with this important land characteristic, it provides a synoptic view of the rapidly transforming West more generally through a discussion of recent suburbanization, climatic, and fire activity trends. Most importantly “the Incendiary” is introduced as a metaphor for treating the suburban West like a troubled patient (an arsonist) with deeply held and engrained behaviors and characteristics. The chapter suggests that engaging the West as merely a flammable landscape is to confront symptoms of the Incendiary, while confronting the Incendiary itself is to treat the essential character and core mechanisms driving growth and social-environmental changes in high fire risk landscapes at the urban fringe.
Keywords: affluence-vulnerability interface, wildfires, suburban landscape management, fire risk, West, Oakland Hills Tunnel Fire
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