The Overhead Wire Daily | Systems You Didn’t Think About
January 14, 2025
A lot of news coverage rightfully on the fires in Los Angeles and a lot of different angles to discuss the issue from insurance to prevention. One thing I’ve been thinking about from an overall perspective that’s not just tied to this catastrophe but to climate change, housing, and transportation issues more generally is there’s so much to learn about how you can make things better. A lot of times we just haven’t learned about or been introduced to them yet.
Unfortunately unless you’re deep into something and it’s not an immediate problem, it’s hard to wrap your head around something that might be important down the line. My wife and I recently renovated our basement and our architects helped us figure out many of the requests we had for indoor air filtration and other issues, but when I told the insurance company that we were almost finished they wanted other protections including a water intrusion monitor. Information that would have been helpful when the walls were opened up.
And even recently when reading Mike Eliason’s wonderful new book Building for People (podcast coming soon) there were a number of other things I wish we would have considered but that building codes and city standards haven’t caught up with yet. Exterior shading for the windows? More solar panels? Heat pump water heater enclosures that don’t conflict with fire codes?
The same thing goes for neighborhood and transportation construction at a much bigger scale. The things you want to think of but don’t until after the project is finished and you are using it are the most frustrating. Which is one reason why systems thinking is important, but also difficult when there are soooo many systems to consider and decisions to make. Sometimes those underlying systems like street networks are really hard to change after the fact!
There are going to be a lot of decisions made about insurance and building codes and development and even transportation over the next several months and years. And not just in LA but around the country as summer heat waves come back and climate change continues. But it might be worth it to think about all the systems that need to be interconnected in ways that make life more sustainable and just plain better.
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