Politics of Urban Development and Wildfires in California and Turkey

Utku Balaban and Albert S Fu
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Utku Balaban: Department of Labor Economics and Industrial Relations, Faculty of Political Science, Ankara University, Cemal Gürsel Bulvarι, 06590 Cebeci, Ankara, Turkey
Albert S Fu: Anthropology/Sociology Department, PO Box 730, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA 19530-0730, USA

Environment and Planning A, 2014, vol. 46, issue 4, 820-836

Abstract: While Turkey and California suffer similar wildfire risks, they have developed diametrically opposed fire-suppression strategies: the former adopted an increasingly centralized strategy, while the latter depends upon a highly decentralized system. This paper is a comparative analysis that relates the politics of land use in wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs) to this divergence in firefighting strategies. Our argument is that the evolution of the divergent fire-suppression strategies in California and Turkey are linked to two different types of rent-seeking behavior . Developers and landed interest seek absolute rent in Turkey and differential rent in California. The decentralized strategy in California allows property prices to be distinguished between areas of low and high protection, and commodifies safety as a form of investment regulating the market prices of land. In Turkey, the tendency toward centralization of firefighting is a part of the composite political strategy to open new land for development by completing the hitherto unfinished cadastral records of the WUIs. Thus, the centralized firefighting strategy leads indirectly to extensive commodification of the WUIs in Turkey and expands the national land market.

Keywords: commodification; disasters; fire prevention and suppression; forests; land-use policy; state; urban development; ground rent; absolute rent; differential rent; rent-seeking behavior; wildfires; wildland–urban interface (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:4:p:820-836

DOI: 10.1068/a46163

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