Fire-Ravaged Paradise Plans for a Resilient Rebirth

Town leaders in Paradise, the California town devastated by wildfire almost four years ago, worked with a landscape architecture, planning, and urban design firm to outline plans for a 90,000-acre “buffer zone” that could protect the town from future fires. Adele Peters describes the plan, writing, “Homeowners in wildfire zones already know that their houses are safer when surrounded by few things that can burn; SWA’s design applies the same idea to a city.”

According to Peters, “The design proposes surrounding the town with new parks, athletic fields, orchards, and other amenities that are less likely to burn than forests, in a design that carefully considers data about current land uses, ownership, and fire risk.” The plan also calls for clearing vegetation along power transmission corridors and using controlled burns to thin out flammable materials.

“While it remains to be seen how much of the design Paradise will adopt, the Parks and Recreation Department has already started acquiring new land as a buffer zone around the town, and is considering the full design.” With a quarter of the state’s population living in fire-prone areas, the plan could serve as a model for other California communities on the increasingly vulnerable wildland-urban interface.