麻豆社

On 7 January 2025, the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighbourhoods of Los Angeles suffered two of the most destructive fires in the city鈥檚 history. Twenty-one people died and 15,000 buildings were destroyed over a combined area the size of Paris.

The city is still reeling from the scale and intensity of the fires, and the challenge of rebuilding areas in which almost nothing remains standing. As the first tentative shoots of recovery begin to appear, Jonathan Glancey meets locals, including architects Scott Uriu and Michael Kovac. Like Dustin Bramell, co-founder of the Case Study: Adapt programme, they lost their own homes in the fires. Others, like architect and social justice advocate Steven Lewis, or Cynthia Siegler and Alex Athenson, founders of the Foothill Foundation Catalogue, saw their neighbours and communities displaced. Now they are trying to help replace what has been lost while looking for better ways of building, in a land where earthquakes, drought and fire are an ever present threat.

As man-made climate change and urban growth worsen the risk and impact of fires, Jonathan asks experts including Dan Turner, a retired fire chief and executive director of Cal Poly鈥檚 Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Institute, and architecture critic Frances Anderton if and how this city can reshape itself for a better future.

(Photo: Firefighters create a firebreak to slow the Palisades fire, in Mandeville Canyon, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, US, 12 January, 2025. Firefighters dressed in orange jackets and safety helmets work in a row down a hillside covered in pink ash, with residential houses behind them. Credit: Ringo Chiu/Reuters)

Presenter: Jonathan Glancy
Producer: Michael Umney
Executive producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for the 麻豆社 World Service