How Long Does it Take to Rebuild a City?

Tracking housing recovery after 4 recent wildfires

After the Los Angeles wildfires destroyed more than 12,000 homes, state and local leaders have made emphasized speedy recovery as their top policy priority. Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, and other California officials have taken numerous actions to accelerate recovery, like waiving environmental reviews and reducing regulatory hurdles.

Our Climate and Communities team at Urban wondered, how quickly has recovery happened after other recent fires? What benchmarks might Los Angeles compare itself to, and what factors influence the relative speed of housing recovery and replacement?

We collected parcel-level data on houses destroyed by four recent wildfires and analyzed their recovery progress. In our latest blog post we present the findings from this rapid research effort and discuss some of the contextual factors that inform these results.