Written by Ana Zapata, AIA
When wildfires tore through Los Angeles County, they left more than scorched hillsides and flattened homes. They exposed the fragility of a development pattern that, for decades, placed homes one-by-one into fire-prone terrain with limited planning for collective risk.
Now, as homeowners begin the difficult process of rebuilding, Los Angeles faces a rare and urgent opportunity: not just to restore what was lost, but to rethink how neighborhoods in wildfire zones are designed, built, and protected.
The emerging concept is simple but transformative: treat the neighborhood as a system — not just a cluster of private properties, but an interdependent unit that adapts, defends, and thrives together.
Wildfire Is Natural — But What We're Seeing Isn’t
Southern California’s ecosystem has long been shaped by fire. Chaparral landscapes evolved with cycles of burn and regrowth. But recent fires are different — larger, faster, and more destructive than what history would predict.
Expert consensus — including CAL FIRE, NOAA, and the IPCC — is clear: while wildfire is a natural phenomenon, the intensity of current fires reflects the impacts of human-driven climate change. Longer droughts, hotter nights, extreme heat events, and higher wind speeds all contribute to conditions where fires ignite more easily and spread with unprecedented speed.
The implication is simple: if the climate has changed, our approach to rebuilding must change with it.
From Individual Homes to Resilient Neighborhoods
Many fire-affected homeowners are now rebuilding under Los Angeles County’s Like-for-Like Rebuild Program, which allows a modest increase in square footage and minor floor plan changes without triggering full design review.
While this approach streamlines the process, it also limits the scope of innovation. Rebuilding on a parcel-by-parcel basis restores structures — but not necessarily long-term safety.
Forward-looking communities are taking a broader view, focusing on shared risk and neighborhood-scale resilience: homes, infrastructure, landscaping, and emergency systems all working in concert to prevent loss and speed recovery.
Anatomy of a Fire-Resilient Neighborhood
Neighborhoods designed for fire survival often share key elements:
Defensible Design
Compact footprints, simple forms, and minimized overhangs reduce ignition points.
Ember-resistant detailing like vent covers and sealed eaves improve building survivability.
Clustered layouts allow for shared firebreaks and emergency access zones.
Smarter Materials
Steel or concrete framing
Non-combustible siding (stucco, fiber cement, or metal)
Tempered glass windows
Class A roofing (tile, metal, or fire-rated composite)
Emerging technologies are raising the bar:
Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT): engineered to char rather than collapse
Aerated concrete: insulating and fireproof
Intumescent coatings: expand under heat to protect the structure
Site-Smart Placement
Avoid building in topographic features like canyons, ridge lines, and saddles, where fires accelerate.
Use terrain and orientation to slow fire spread and optimize access for responders.
Rethinking Popular Features
Some beloved architectural features come with elevated risk — especially traditional fireplaces and chimneys. These vertical structures can act like chimneys in reverse during a fire, drawing in embers and igniting interiors.
In response, many new homes are opting for sealed gas fireplaces, which preserve the ambiance without requiring a combustible chimney shaft. Where traditional fireplaces are used, tight-fitting spark arrestors and chimney caps are becoming essential safeguards.
Planning Tools That Enable Resilience
Many communities are adopting broader planning tools to support long-term safety:
Wildfire Risk Maps for development decisions
Zoning overlays in Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZs)
Fire-Resistant Overlay Districts, as pioneered in counties like Santa Barbara, requiring upgraded standards for entire neighborhoods
These tools make resilience systemic — not just homeowner-dependent.
The Role of HOAs in the New Model
HOAs, through their Architectural Committees, play a critical role in this shift. They review rebuilds, enforce CC&Rs, and guide neighborhood aesthetics — all of which can be aligned with wildfire adaptation.
By updating guidelines, HOAs can:
Require or encourage fire-resistant materials
Establish clear defensible space rules
Promote shared emergency infrastructure
Restrict risky rebuilding configurations
Addressing Cost and Supply Chain Pressures
Fire-safe materials — like tempered glass and metal framing — can carry a premium, especially when impacted by tariffs or supply shortages. This creates pressure to fall back on cheaper, combustible materials.
To address this, some communities are exploring:
Bulk material sourcing
Group insurance purchasing
Policy advocacy for tariff relief in disaster-recovery areas — a measure that has precedent under emergency declarations at both state and federal levels.
These strategies help ensure that resilient design remains accessible and scalable, even under financial strain.
A City Reimagined
Los Angeles has long been a city defined by reinvention — from midcentury modernism to the birth of the superhighway. Today, it faces a different kind of challenge: how to design and live in wildfire country.
That future won’t be built one house at a time. It will emerge from neighborhoods that are designed to adapt and defend together — places where fire-resistant materials, thoughtful planning, and cooperative infrastructure form a cohesive, survivable whole.
The next generation of Southern California neighborhoods must do more than recover from disaster.
They must be built to outlast it.