Flame and Fortune in the American West
Regular price
€31.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Gregory L. Simon
american history
american west
Author_Gregory L. Simon
berkeley
california
california history
Category=JBSD
Category=RND
Category=RPC
danger
environmental
environmentalism
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exurban
government
hazard
landscapes
natural disaster
neighborhood
oakland
oakland hills
oakland hills tunnel fire
policy
politics
profit
rebuilding
social studies
suburban
tunnel fire
united states history
urban
us history
western united states
westward expansion
Product details
- ISBN 9780520292796
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 04 Oct 2016
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Flame and Fortune in the American West creatively and meticulously investigates the ongoing politics, folly, and avarice shaping the production of increasingly widespread yet dangerous suburban and exurban landscapes. The 1991 Oakland Hills Tunnel Fire is used as a starting point to better understand these complex social-environmental processes. The Tunnel Fire is the most destructive fire-in terms of structures lost-in California history. More than 3,000 residential structures burned and 25 lives were lost. Although this fire occurred in Oakland and Berkeley, others like it sear through landscapes in California and the American West that have experienced urban growth and development within areas historically prone to fire.
Simon skillfully blends techniques from environmental history, political ecology, and science studies to closely examine the Tunnel Fire within a broader historical and spatial context of regional economic development and natural resource management, such as the widespread planting of eucalyptus trees as an exotic lure for homeowners, and the creation of hillside neighborhoods for tax revenue-decisions that produced communities with increased vulnerability to fire. Simon demonstrates how a drive for affluence led to a state of vulnerability for rich and poor alike in Oakland that has only been exacerbated by the rebuilding of neighborhoods after the fire. Despite these troubling trends, Flame and Fortune in the American West illustrates how many popular and scientific debates on fire limit the scope and efficacy of policy responses. These risky yet profitable developments (what the author refers to as the Incendiary), as well as proposed strategies for challenging them, are discussed in the context of urbanizing areas around the American West and hold broad applicability within hazard-prone areas globally.
Gregory L. Simon is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver and coeditor of Cities, Nature, and Development: The Politics and Production of Urban Vulnerabilities. He has been a core advisor to the United Nations Foundation and is a National Science Foundation grant award winner. He has recently served as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Stanford University.
