![It's Time for Designers to Embrace Fire as the Ecological and Cultural Force That It Is - Featured Image](https://snoopy.archdaily.com/images/archdaily/media/images/5f9d/b2d3/63c0/1773/7400/0131/slideshow/x20140213-097400a-1536x1025.jpg.pagespeed.ic.LyTnSm9d0d.jpg?1604170445&format=webp&width=640&height=580)
Spurred by disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, cities across the United States have, over the past 15 years, learned to “live with water.” After more than a century of filling wetlands, damming rivers, and diverting streams and stormwater flows into concrete channels, public officials, influenced by a coterie of landscape architects and planners, have embraced the opposite strategy, investing in open space networks that use dynamic natural systems to slow, store, and absorb floodwaters.