Can you say a bit more about the role of landscape architecture in reducing wildfire risk at the community scale?

We design parks, but we don’t always talk about them as emergency refuge areas. In fact, we almost never do. But during the Camp Fire, which tore through the town of Paradise, and was one of the deadliest wildfires in American history, dozens of lives were saved when people who couldn’t evacuate in time took shelter in a park with irrigated ball fields and open green space. We can design parks as emergency refuges and also as staging areas for firefighting personnel. Trails can serve as a multimodal mobility corridors or as evacuation routes. This is the type of layering that we need to do more of.

How are the strategies outlined in Playbook for the Pyrocene shaping current projects?

In Pacific Palisades, we’re working on the redesign of a neighborhood community center and park that were damaged by last January’s fire using many of the core concepts presented in the book. The project is still in community-listening phases. There’s no planting plan yet, but there are some interesting ideas already on the table, including working with a palette that has fewer fire-hazard traits, such as vegetation that is less waxy or resinous, has more foliar moisture, and has bark that doesn’t peel or shed. We’re also beginning to look at the alignments of roadways, interior parking areas, and pedestrian pathways to optimize access as well as egress, so that they can do double duty in an emergency.

Another project, one that illustrates a different way of engaging with fire-prone communities, is a plaza we just finished in downtown Oakland. Our design team learned about a stand of eucalyptus in the Berkeley Hills flagged for removal specifically because of fire safety. SWA partnered with a local mill to repurpose the wood into eight benches for the new plaza. It’s an interesting way of thinking about engagement with wildfire-prone regions that isn’t necessarily about an emergency or the moment of disaster, or even the location of the fire itself. Instead, it is about a circular economy that leverages our relationship to fire.

An SWA-designed plaza in Oakland includes benches made from trees felled to reduce wildfire risk. Photo © David Lloyd

Has the research for Playbook for the Pyrocene influenced the development of policy or standards?

We often disseminate our research without knowing who reads it or who it influences. But I recently learned that SWA has been actively engaged in a cross-disciplinary working group at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, bringing together the architecture department, facilities and maintenance, and emergency services, and the WUI [wildland urban interface] Fire Institute, which is based at the university. The team was tasked with synthesizing research, operational needs, and best practices for fire science into a unified standards document. All new construction on campus will be on the hook for following it. Ultimately, the goal is to have the entire California State University system formally adopt these standards.

The firm is working with Cal Poly on campus-wide fire standards. Image © SWA

Since last year’s fires, have you considered updating Playbook for the Pyrocene?

Generally, the rules of thumb and the applied risk-reduction strategies presented have held up as effective approaches to design and planning in nearly all fire-prone landscapes. The caveat that continues to come up in conversation, especially over the past year, is just how nuanced today’s wildfire dilemma really is. The relationships between fire-adapted ecosystems and 20th-century patterns of urbanization in the Sierra Nevada foothills and Northern California are wildly different from those in the Southern California chaparral. Playbook for the Pyrocene continues to be a highly valuable resource, but, in future publications, I would love to see some of the chapters or ideas expanded to capture that regionally specific nuance.

Does the book have broader implications, beyond fire-risk mitigation?

People are moving to the edges of large metropolitan regions, farther from utilities, social services, and economic centers, to find affordable housing. This form of urbanization, where the built environment comes into direct conflict with wildlife systems and agricultural land, is more than just a fire challenge. We’re talking about habitat encroachment, biodiversity loss, zoonotic disease vectors, and social-equity issues. For me—and for many of my colleagues—this realignment of the edge of cities with our discipline is an important outcome of Playbook for the Pyrocene and our wildfire research.