Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience: Addressing California’s Climate, Conservation & Housing Crises

The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) —where human development mixes in with or abuts undeveloped natural areas— is the area of the fastest housing growth in the U.S., with California leading in this growth. This is of major concern, since WUI housing is the most environmentally hazardous form of development, especially in the context of climate change. Indeed in California, WUI growth is now the leading cause of the state’s increasingly devastating wildfires. Yet there is no systematic research on what social factors are actually driving this growth, nor on associated demographics and socio-environmental dynamics. In this project we seek to understand these factors through a case study of WUI growth on California’s Central Coast, including the counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Benito, and Monterey. In doing so we hypothesize that one overlooked but crucial factor is California’s affordable housing crisis, which, like the state’s WUI growth, is also the most extreme in the nation.

We also recognize that the drivers of WUI growth are complex and multiple, with the affordability and desirability of these locales entangled with each other much like WUI lands themselves. Many move to the WUI out of a desire to live in beautiful, natural areas, a trend that may have accelerated during the pandemic. Many have deeply rooted cultural, spiritual and/or economic ties, with areas designated “WUI” including lands stewarded by California tribes as well as farmed, ranched, and developed over generations by diverse rural communities. Yet at the same time, many WUI areas are more affordable and accessible than their neighboring cities. Thus, sky-rocketing urban housing prices, and the displacement and exclusion of more and more California residents from cities, we suspect, can also help explain increasing rates of WUI growth, and with this, the increasing hazardousness and inequality of these areas.

There is no better place to study these relationships than our own central coast region—itself the least affordable in the nation’s least affordable state, as well as a site of increasingly devastating climate disasters. This includes the CZU lightning complex fire of 2020 in north Santa Cruz County and the massive storms and floods of 2023 that stretched from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Pajaro River Valley of north Monterey County. Researching why people move to and stay in increasingly hazardous areas, and how they manage in the face and aftermath of disasters, is essential if we are to understand the causes and consequences of WUI growth. Such research is also vital if we are to envision ways to meaningfully address and reduce this growth alongside WUI hazardousness — from supporting equitable land stewardship and mitigation practices in the WUI, to expanding access to affordable housing in urban areas.

To investigate, we draw on ethnographic, historical, ecological, spatial, and statistical methods, including a large scale survey and in depth interviews with WUI residents alongside novel approaches to mapping and spatial analysis. The following conceptual diagram helps explain the relational, regional framework we’re working with. Ultimately, with its location at the socio-environmental interface, we hope the WUI can also serve as an interface for new ways of thinking about our intertwined climate, conservation and housing needs on the Central Coast and beyond.