When the Antiplanner looks at before-and-after aerial photos of the fire in Paradise, California that killed at least 84 people, the first thing I think is that, like last year’s Santa Rosa fire, the houses were built too closely together. This made it impossible, short of building a home exclusively of concrete, to defend homes from fire. Once one house caught on fire, its neighbors would be ignited by the radiant heat of the first.
As described in a Los Angeles Time article, the best way to prevent such “structure to structure ignition” is to build homes at least 100 feet apart. California law in fact requires that homeowners provide a 100-foot perimeter of “defensible space,” but the law doesn’t require that homes be built 100 feet apart. As the Times notes, the “100-foot requirement stops at the property line.”
Unfortunately, urban planners’ mania for density makes it difficult, if not impossible, for California developers to lay out homesites on one-acre lots, which would insure at least 100 feet between homes. While I don’t know the situation in Paradise, population data indicate that much of the growth of the city has been since 1970, when many California cities and counties began limiting low-density development. Continue reading
