Flame and fortune in California: The material and political dimensions of vulnerability

A critical physical geography of urban soil contamination

“…The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a boon for Oakland's population and economy. Housing went up rapidly to accommodate the seismic refugees, while development of vast tracts of land followed on the heels of timber extraction in the hills above (Simon and Dooling, 2013). One of the most powerful developers -and the nation's largest at the time -was The Realty Syndicate, which developed nearly 5300 ha in Oakland between 1895 and 1913 (Walker, 2001;Walker and Schafran, 2015).…”

Vulnerability-in-Production: A Spatial History of Nature, Affluence, and Fire in Oakland, California

“…Using the Tunnel Fire as a starting point for analysis, this article employs spatial-historical analysis to illuminate how vulnerabilities, affluence, and space are coproduced (Simon and Dooling 2013). In so doing, this analysis articulates two interrelated dimensions of vulnerability-in-production.…”

“…A key focus of this analytic approach, therefore, is to integrate and leverage diverse data that illuminate the production and reproduction of vulnerable spaces in relation to other spaces (Simon and Dooling 2013). In this study, spatial history analysis promotes relational enquiry that elucidates how factors generating vulnerability in high-risk fire areas build over time (temporal relationality) and also influence and reinforce vulnerabilities within other parts of Oakland (spatial relationality).…”

“…Beginning with the work of Hewitt (1983), Liverman (1990), and Wisner (1993), among others, many have sought to illuminate structural processes undergirding vulnerability. This scholarship closely examines how interactions between political economies of resource use and normative planning activities influence which places and populations become vulnerable (e.g., Mustafa 1998Mustafa , 2005Cutter, Mitchell, and Scott 2000;Oliver-Smith 2002;Pelling 2003;Orsi 2004;Wisner et al 2004;Hogan and Marandola 2005;Collins 2008Collins , 2010Simon 2012); how material conditions of vulnerability are produced through complex and shifting governance arrangements comprised of diverse business, civil society, and government entities (Pelling et al 2008;Lynch 2012); and how disconnections between lived experiences and political discourse reveal political struggles over resources and livelihoods (Dooling and Simon 2012;Rebotier 2012;Simon and Dooling 2013). Findlay's (2005) concept of vulnerable spatialities, for example, connotes the social, political, and economic processes through which people and places become exposed to shifting states of vulnerability over time (see also Adger 2006; Dooling and Simon 2012).…”

“…On the other hand, spatial histories of vulnerability demonstrate the recursive production of vulnerabilities across space and raise larger questions about how those conditions are generated and responded to (Simon and Dooling 2013). A key focus of spatial history, therefore, is to leverage diverse data to illuminate the production and reproduction of vulnerable spaces in relation to other spaces-thereby highlighting the production of vulnerability as a deeply relational process (see also Sayre 2005;Rocheleau 2008;Neumann 2010).…”