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This season has once again become a summer of wildfires, which are more than ever a major problem. So what does that have to do with planning? The answer is the explosive growth of the 鈥渨ildland-urban interface鈥� (WUI).

Wildfires have always impacted the forests and range lands of the western U.S., and climate change is certainly a major driver of their increased frequency and intensity. But what has also changed is the amount of human settlement in these areas subject to natural wildfires. Not only has that meant more humans to cause fires, but also many more buildings in harm鈥檚 way as well as an exponential increase in risk to life and property 鈥� plus a huge increase in the public cost of firefighting.

In Oregon we at least have urban growth boundaries that do a pretty good job of controlling outward expansion of suburban development, minimizing the exposure of residential areas to wildfires. Other places have had it much worse. Look at California. Its wildland-urban interface has expanded so much that you see almost daily examples of large numbers of suburban homes being put at risk. As just one example, the big fire in the Sonoma area last year had a very similar footprint to a fire about 25 years ago. That fire burned only a few homes, but last year鈥檚 destroyed more than 5,000 鈥� and a number of people died.

But we can鈥檛 be too smug here in Oregon. There is a lot of housing in unincorporated parts of the state that existed before planning laws, and still a lot being built on previously platted lots. Rigorous adherence to compact development forms will help minimize our exposure to this very real risk.