ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changing nature of hazard vulnerability in California focusing on Southern California. It discusses the changing demographics of the state and in the city of Los Angeles. People’s coping capacities are in turn shaped by multiscale historical, cultural, geographic, and political economic factors that conspire to produce unequal hazard exposure in a given population and that constrain some people’s ability to withstand with the effects of a hazard event. Vulnerability scholars are in general agreement that the poor and marginalized minorities will likely face greater coping and recovery issues than those privileged by race and class. Thus, considering the changing demographic and political economic landscape in California provides a broad view on who is potentially vulnerable to a hazard event. Since 1990, California has added approximately eight million new residents, with a state population of approximately thirty-eight million in 2015.
