In the era when American cities regularly caught fire, the widespread destruction seeded what looks, in retrospecthawkplay, like possibility.

Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 accelerated its rise as a dominant metropolis. In Boston, which burned in 1872, the value of land newly topped with better buildings surged. After its 1889 fire, Seattle built a taller downtown in brick and stone, with wider avenues and modern infrastructure. San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire built denser housing that could better hold all the westward migrants eager to move there.

These cities changed in ways and at a speed that wouldn’t have been possible without fires. The lessons of that history are relevant in Los Angeles today, where elected officials have promised to speed the path to rebuilding from devastating wildfires — but only if residents rebuild exactly what was there before. That means, according to a mayoral order, clearing the way for new buildings of the same size, in the same location, intended for the same use, without adding any housing units.

What other cities did more than a century ago doesn’t mean that Los Angeles should replace single-family homes with high-rises on the slopes of the Pacific Palisades, or that residential Altadena should erect a commercial downtown. What these past fires presented was a rare chance to respond in new ways to the pressures bearing down on the cities — from population growth, or rising rents, or the evolving demands of a new century. Cities adapt slowly and often poorly to such pressures. But occasionally across history, a destructive tragedy can make doing so easier.

For years now, Los Angeles has been straining under a housing crisis, one that will be worsened by the wildfires. Facing thousands of destroyed homes and newly homeless residents, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles’s mayor,ff777 casino Karen Bass, acknowledged that the region’s onerous obstacles to construction would impede recovery from disaster. Offering a measure of both certainty and compassion, they promised to waive environmental regulations, to speed up permitting, to create a “one-stop shop” for the bureaucracy of home building.

It’s a sweeping act of permission that builders and advocates for housing have sought for years to address the region’s shortage of affordable housing.

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United States Magistrate Judge Ryon M. McCabe, of the Federal District Court in West Palm Beach, Fla., granted the government’s request on Monday to keep the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, in jail without bond. So far, Mr. Routh has been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, and with possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Mr. Williams, found guilty of murder 21 years ago, has been fighting his conviction for decades, and this year he won the support of the prosecutor’s office that brought the original case. But the state attorney general maintained that Mr. Williams, now 55, was guilty, and the legal battle between the state and the county has been playing out for months in Missouri’s courts.

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