Future City New Mexico Regionals

Around the world, fires that once burned primarily in forests and grasslands are increasingly reaching suburbs and cities. This often occurs in areas where communities and natural landscapes intersect, a region known as the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). Today, more than 60,000 communities in the United States are located within or near the WUI, and this area continues to expand by approximately 2 million acres each year. At the same time, climate change is influencing fire regimes by creating warmer, drier, and windier conditions in many regions for longer portions of the year.

As flames and embers spread from the WUI into developed areas, homes and other structures can ignite one another like dominos, allowing fires to move rapidly through communities rather than remaining confined to natural vegetation. This highlights a critical reality: the challenge is not only the fire itself, but also how and where our communities are designed, built, and connected to the surrounding landscape.

The teams’ challenge: Design a resilient future city that can prevent, protect, and recover from urban wildfires.