6.3.7 Summary

“few tackle the difficult land-use issue of where and how humans choose to build their communities in the first place. The prospect of widely increasing fire activity with climate change intensifies the need of a new path forward”. Moritz et al, 2014.

In theory, the future could be ‘engineered’. In practice, both Earth and human systems align not to linear trajectories as can be determined, let alone ‘managed’ down to the last detail. Not merely in mythological and other literary works has the viability of the ‘technofix’ been challenged, but in innumerable natural hazard scenarios of past and present. Nonetheless, Earth and human systems are creatures of relative habit, thus in looking to the past we find indications of possible futures. Whether in relation to wildfire, or any other genre of event as recurs within predictable spatial, temporal, and in the instance of Earth systems, biochemical and temperature ranges, cyclicality is a consequence of fundamental cause and effect mechanisms, thus whereupon we understand those mechanisms, though we may know not the specifics of that which may occur in consequence, we know, and with reasonable assurance, of the range of possibilities as relate thereto [Fig. 71].

Although the origins of the belief systems of Mesopotamian peoples predate ‘history’, their cities – the first cities – were built upon the emergence of a climate hospitable to farming, therein to permanence of place: to settlement. As a planetary-scale regime shift triggered an urban revolution then, whereupon theoretical and climate models are correct, even in such instance as MST is limited to <+2°C the predominant architectural and urban design paradigm of present would be not fit for future purpose. However, should MST exceed the sum thereof and fall into the range of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum not merely would that which humanity builds need be re-evaluated, but attachment to place, as wildfires and the wider folio of natural hazards, including but not limited to extremes of heat, cold, wind, and water, and the secondary impacts thereof [i.e. vector and water borne diseases] displace people, their possessions, pets, and livestock.

All the while, humans’ psychological make-up suggests that debates will continue to rage as to whether our collective actions are propagating planetary pandemonium, and even in such instance as parties agree thereon there will be not sustained consensus on any remedy thereto, which, particularly in an age when there are they with all the biologically-modifying gear, but scant ecological idea could yet further perpetuate the problems we face. But, history illuminates not problems alone. In the words of a recent UNEP report, “Living cultural heritage is a vital resource for climate adaption” (2016, p.24).

Sourced remotely not locally, built ‘to last’ not ‘evolve’, and largely at odds with abiotic and biotic systems, the predominant architectural and urban design paradigm of both the WUI and wider world present is the antithesis of its antecedents. However, going forward, humanity’s choices are restricted to neither the modus of present nor past, for we have both the scientific and technical capacity to craft another architectural ‘way’.

>Continue to Chapter 6 [part IV] here.

The thesis is also available in PDF format, downloadable in several parts on Academia and Researchgate.

Note that figures have been removed from the digital version hosted on this site, but are included in the PDFs available at the links above.

Citation: Sterry, M. L., (2018) Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory. PhD Thesis, Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group, University of Greenwich, London.