Davis’ ‘Ecology of Fear’ re-read in the 21st century
In the “English conversations” blog associated with Cybergeo, Renaud Le Goix (CNRS, Université Paris Cité, UMR Géographie-cités 8504, Paris) and Céline Vacchiani-Marcuzzo (Université Paris Cité, UMR Géographie-cités, Paris) aim at circumscribing the aftermaths of the 2025 fire seasons in the light of the sprawling nature of the Los Angeles Urban region.
They start by referring back to Mike Davis work and the historical wildfires in Los Angeles and their intrication with the sprawling built environement (Davis 1995, 1998). They do so with a wider focus in time (using historical data on wildfires in the metropolitan region), as well as with regards to a scale of analysis at the metropolitan level (other recent fires occurred in less central areas, but also impact inhabited neighborhoods).
They analyze fires in Los Angeles’ recent history, using public data from the California Open Data Portal, recent census data (Manson et al. 2024), and reproducible sciences protocols (https://gitlab.huma-num.fr/rlegoix/losangelesfires). This comment was prepared with wildfire data last updated on 15 jan. 2025.
To analyze this event in a broader perspective, the authors focus on the intrications with the socio-economic patterns and sprawling nature of the buit environment, characterized of single family homes, subdivisions, private communities and master planned communites. This fabric of the urban and suburban built environment intersects with a fragmented local governance structure (Keil 2000; Le Goix 2016). This helps getting a better understanding of some of the issues in local water management and fire services structure.
