Are We Doing This Right? // Fire Departments Edition

We’re starting a new series on the Go Cultivate! podcast called “Are We Doing This Right?” Once a month we’ll pick a topic – some element of the way we design or operate our cities – and honestly ask the question: Are we doing this right? We’ll explore common assumptions, bust (or uphold) a few myths, and try to get toward a sense of what we might be able to do differently (based on the experiences of those who have already tried it themselves). This month’s topic: Fire departments. Fire departments. Public safety. You hardly hear one of these phrases without the other following shortly behind. The idea, of course, is that fire is an ever-present threat to human safety, no matter where you are. The fire department—and the development codes that work along side it—are supposed to make the city safer as a whole. A pretty uncontroversial notion, right? Well, we wanted to take a closer look at the ways fire response is informing the physical form of our communities. Is there any chance that our attempts to optimize for fire response make our cities less safe in other ways?  For the most part, the history of fire fighting truly is a history of making cities safer places to be. Much of the progress centered on issues such as codifying building exits and reducing flammable materials. Starting a few decades ago, though, we started seeing the incorporation of emergency vehicle access requirements into city zoning codes. The idea being, in the event of fires still occurring, we should make it easier for fire response vehicles to get to the scene, set up, and control the fire. What that translated to was an increased focus on removing any obstacles that might get in the way: fewer obstacles in the way should equal a faster response time, and with fires, saving time could mean saving lives. The idea makes sense. We should want fire fighters to get to the scene of a fire as quickly as possible. But, as we’ll see, the way we’ve chosen to go about that has left us in a tricky spot. In this episode, which kicks off our new series "Are We Doing This Right?," we explore the ways that fire standards have influenced the design of streets in our cities, and how our cities may actually be ending up less safe overall as a result. What got us here in the first place, and how might we approach fire response and public safety in a more holistic manner? Listen in to hear us discuss, and then let us know your thoughts! And if you want to do some further reading, we've got a list of resources on the show page for this episode. -- The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of Verdunity. Find more about this and other episodes (and our blog) at verdunity.com/go-cultivate. You can also find us on social media. Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn -- (Music in this episode is from No Future & Custodian of Records.) verdunity.com/podcast/episode-33