UC Berkeley

An Atlas For Land Back: Marginalization in a California Climate Area correlates displacement of descendants with vegetation change. Part I presents a theoretical critique of urbanism and landscape. Aggregate fire perimeters are considered in relation to change between historic vegetation type maps, from 1926-1961, and modern vegetation type maps, from 1997-2015. Vegetation categories are charted by hill aspect and spatial distribution, correlated with 1880 and 1900 descendant populations (1). Demographics are understood in terms of transition theory (2), demonstrating urbanization for the colonial state, and ruralization of the descendant population. Age-gender population pyramids show the transition of historically long lived, education-oriented urban populations into marginalized rural laborers (3). Fire is understood in terms of its cultural, anthropogenic potential, to maintain Grassy Woodland “openings” (4). These are fire gardens, “scattering blooms,” around which neighborhoods maintain distinct identities while integrating outsiders. The study is limited by one consistent climate zone; 20km to 40km from the ocean, in Trinity, Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Benito, and Monterey counties; focusing on source material from roughly 1850 to 1961. Descendants are defined as people born in California prior to 1850, with at least one parent born in California, and their descendants (with full lists in appendix E). Part II provides 42 town-state maps of historic fires and vegetation change, with chapters focusing on five specific contexts of land back. In Napa Valley, vegetation change validates accounts of mass murder (5). In Ukiah Valley, social debt provides a lens on historical displacement and accumulation capitalism (6). In the East Bay, racial and property mapping techniques are deployed to dispossess urban communities (7). In the Santa Clara Valley, a community of artists and craftspeople humanize infrastructure (8). In the Salinas Valley area, transgression and embodiment is understood in terms of the gendered language of place (9).Part III is an open letter on cities of land back, recentering our most vulnerable populations in our most venerable neighborhoods.