GregBaker_Oct11-2011

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BAKER 1

This research focuses on the division of a community based on infrastructural goals of

a city whose main economic source had become obsolete. Oakland, California was the

end of the Southern Pacic railroad, and the neighborhood of West Oakland where thestation was located is now a collection of smaller enclaves among a network of freeways,

bordered by a light rail line and state buildings. The site of the old Cypress Viaduct of the

Nimitz Freeway is now a landscaped median with a pedestrian path, with a sculpture where

the street crosses a major thoroughfare to downtown and the rest of the city. This sculpture,

called “Ladders,” is a reference to the ladders used to rescue survivors of the collapse of

the upper tier of that viaduct during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. After the earth-

quake, the rerouting of that freeway further west creates the landscape that we see today,

and thousands of homes were cleared to make way for redevelopment projects such as

Emerybay in Emeryville and Central Station in Oakland.

The problem with the kind of redevelopment taking place, including the park where

“Ladders” is located, is that all of the shopping malls and condominiums and public art do

not communicate anything about the vibrant community that once existed there as part of

the industrial culture that was destroyed. Architects and developers are working to make

the nancing of these projects come to fruition and are not concerned with the lessons of

modernism. Highly criticized for making cities unlivable, modernist ideology called for the

separation of the city according to land use. Rather than integrating the redevelopment

projects along the coast of the San Francisco Bay, there is a commercial center in Emeryvilleand a residential center in West Oakland, with the freeway system as the main link between

these places and out to the rest of the bay.

One analytical lens that acutely focuses the topic of this research is the tactics of the

Situationists. Through the techniques of drifting about and creating spectacles in the parts of

Paris slated for redevelopment, they sought to spread public awareness of so-called blighted

areas that are actually thriving and full of working class life. Situationist methods actively

politicized urban conditions and, according to some authors, “in such formulations, the city

and its architecture become not just aesthetic objects but dynamic, practical relizations of

art, unique and irreplaceable “works” and not reproducible products–polyrhythmic composi-

tions of linear and cyclical times and different social spaces, born from many labors (“Things,

Flows, Filters, Tactics.” The Unknown City. Bordan, Rendell, Kerr, and Pivaro. pp 16-17).” That

these many time-spaces as they exist(ed) in the city become ‘urban art’ in this way may

not be enough for West Oakland to recover from the economic forces as they have played

out, it will be essential to create a public awareness of the racial segregation that continues

through these new projects. How, then, can an architectural solution capture the essence o

these time-spaces in West Oakland?

THESIS ARTICLE V.1

ABSTRACT



BAKER 2

PATHFINDING

REAL

VIRTUAL

ROUTINEEVENT

DEVELOPMENTREDEVELOPMENT

FOAKLAND

STREETCARS

STREETSFREEWAYS

MODERN TRANSIT

MENTAL MAPDREAM

SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRAIN

CENTRAL STATION / EMERYBAY GROWING THE MEDIAN GRO

IDEOGRAM



BAKER 3

From my vantage point overlooking Pill Hill in Oakland, I feel a serene sense of calm. I

am also overlooking the main axis from downtown Oakland off to the hills, UC Berkeley, and

CCA’s main campus: Broadway. In the section where I live, the street has been renamed

Broadway Auto Row. The car dealerships that used to be where the Whole Foods Market is

located are all here now. There are also a number of auto mechanic and auto body shopshere. The close proximity of residential, commercial, and industrial uses has been a major

part of Oakland’s development. When it was chosen as the terminal point for the Southern

Pacic, what was once the largest Oak grove in the United States began its rapid transfor-

mation.

The other main axis in Oakland was Seventh Street, leading along the waterfront from

downtown to the Point. The Point is now known for the underground tube of the Bay Area

Rapid Transit (BART) light rail system that links San Francisco to the East Bay, but it was oncea vast, bustling railyard. The wealthy, especially owners of downtown real estate and relo-

cators from the 1906 earthquake, immediately settled in the hills in Piedmont and areas that

were soon annexed by Oakland. They were eeing the new industrial landscape, but also

found bedrock that is more stable in an earthquake and better views. Because of this, Oak-

land’s geological stratication is linked to its social stratication.

USGS online spatial data for Google Earth

GROWING THE MEDIAN GROVE



BAKER 4

From those redwood laden hills come three rivers that make up the watershed of Oak-

land’s brackish Lake Merritt, once featuring an open channel to the bay when it was known

as San Antonio Slough. Ships used the slough to collect redwood lumber for use in the con-

struction of homes across the bay in San Francisco. Once so full of waterfowl and sh that

it was a major Ohlone hunting ground and settlement, the channel was slowly lled in ac-

cordance with the street grid and railroad lines until 1926 when the tidal gate was installed,

nalizing the transformation from San Antonio Slough to Lake Merritt. Through a combination

of industrial pollution and the reduction of the channel to 4% of its original size, cutting off es-

sential supply of oxygen levels at the lakebed, the environmental effects were felt as early as

1939 when trucks had to haul away over a ton of dead sh. Dumping restrictions in the lake

remained loose until the 1962, when a severe ood prompted the installation of a new ood

gate and scientists stepped in to increase tidal ow in an effort to heal the ecologically im-

balanced water body. A massive restoration project, which began with aeration fountains

installed in the mid-Nineties, now seeks to further improve tidal ow, build new parks, andreduce the twelve-lane road from 1949 that crosses the old channel to a six-lane road.

Despite the severity of the ecological crisis in Lake Merritt, nothing is being done to

alleviate the social crisis that has plagued West Oakland since around the same time as the

sh died in the lake. Because redevelopmet efforts severed West Oakland from essential

services, African American women living there at the time began to construct “reciprocal

relationships of exchange and mutual dependence that provided newly arrived families

with essential goods and services.( Amerian Babylon, Self. p 56).” The onset of the American

involvement in World War II brought a wave of African American migration from the South to

ll positions in the shipyards of Oakland. These new residents were welcomed by the Black

women already living there, and by the end of the war a vibrant community had sprung

up along Seventh Street. After the war ended, many African Americans could not nd

new work, and overcrowding caught the attention of city ofcials. With the passage of the

Housing Act of 1949, allowing cities to voluntarily elect blighted places for redevelopment,

all of West Oakland was deemed blighted by the Planning Commission. Home demolition

began in 1954, the same year of the rst public proposal of the Nimitz Freeway to run along

Cypress Street. By the end of the decade, West Oakland had been almost completely

fractured by the presence of three interstate highways, nalized seven years later by the

addition of the BART line along the harbor and through the nal stretch of Seventh Street out

to the Point. Quickly realizing that the stories of the displaced people were the only thing

left to hold on to, West Oakland community leaders founded the biweekly newspaper, The

Flatlands, in order to give biographical account of the memories that were being lost on a

daily basis to the new practices of eminent domain (City Against Suburb, Rodriguez. p 57).



BAKER 5

This distinction between the low-lying, middle class areas of the East Bay, known as

the atlands, and the upper class hills that overlook the bay is central to the placement of

the freeway system in Oakland. The MacArthur Freeway, closed to trucks and focused on

getting passenger vehicles to and from East Oakland and the Hills, shares its name with theBoulevard running underneath it, containing much of the local trafc that the freeway is

meant to bypass. The areas of East Oakland closer to the harbor and the airport are served

by the ‘Nasty’ Nimitz Freeway, full of commercial truck trafc, connecting the East and

South Bay areas to the Bay Bridge and the rest of northern California. The Grove-Shafter

Freeway is a direct link to downtown Oakland from the Hills, allowing the wealthy downtown

landowners to access their parking garages directly from the freeway without driving more

than a few blocks on the local streets. The freeway extends beyond the Hills in the other

direction (as Highway 24), through the Altamont Pass to upper-middle class suburban cities

like Walnut Creek that have been growing both in size as well as in the number of jobs and

attractive urban amenities since the completion of the freeway and BART systems.

Further related to sociogeological stratication, the signage reects the perception

of the freeways by the assumed origin and destination commuters. Signs on the Grove-

Shafter Freeway (which is both Interstate 980 and the portion of Highway 24 running through

Oakland) refer to it as Highway 24 when traveling outbound toward the Hills, and as Inter-

state 980 when traveling inbound toward downtown Oakland and the Nimitz Freeway (listing

overlay of author’s depiction of vehicular paths



BAKER 6

San Jose as a control city). Many residents of the Hills are more comfortable associating

with Highway 24, which is designated as a scenic highway, whereas Flatlands residents have

little association with the name Interstate 980, designated in 1981 near the completion of

the freeway. The construction of that freeway lasted over twenty-ve years, while all of the

housing demolition had already been completed. During this time period, a far-left political

group called the Black Panther Party rose and fell, centered around issues of eminent

domain in West Oakland. In fact, no signs list Interstate 980 by itself. Even the inbound trafc

sees the Nimitz designation, Interstate 880, directly below the designation for the 980. In

many ways, however, it was the BART line that spurred the most political controversy. Riots

in the Sixties can be compared to the May 1968 riots in Paris, both associated with leftist

political groups.

In the case of Oakland, the civil unrest of 1966 and 1967 was based on unemployment

of African Americans, which was up to 20%. Out of the 30% overall unemployment rate in

Oakland, African Americans composed 60% of those at the time. And although the BARTsystem brought new jobs and ran straight through West Oakland, no jobs were offered

to Blacks until federal intervention enforced an afrmative action program at the end of

1967. In order to tell the history of infrastructure in Oakland, one must also tell the history of

a civil rights struggle that still has major ramications today. If the Situationists in Paris were

able to raise political awareness through the political urban geographies of their mappings,

what would a similar tactic produce in the context of West Oakland? Whether or not the

planners, developers, and architects of redevelopment in Oakland are aware of it, the

effects of their efforts are creating a modernist future in which geography is divided by land

use. The current transit infrastructure in the Bay Area relies on the specialization of each

locality. Therefore, local interests were largely ignored by the transit district that was estab-

lished to implement the system. In the case of West Oakland, the backlash created so much

community activism that very few victories could actually be won because of all the stake-

holders. Today, West Oakland still sits badly in need of urban renewal, not the continued

reinforcement of the area as blighted and in need of redevelopment. After fty years of the

same awed strategy, it is time to reinvent transit in West Oakland for the third time.



BAKER 7

Davis, Ann Leslie. “Undoing the 1950s: The Death and Revival of Lake Merritt.” OaklandMagazine. Sept-Oct (2011): 45-49.

This article is a concise summary of hydrology issues as they relate to transportationinfrastructure.

Gutman, Marta Ruth. “On the Ground in Oakland: Women and Institution Building in an

Industrial City.” Dissertation, University of California, 2000.

This graduate essay follows a school teacher on her path to a make-shift school inWest Oakland, giving an account of what development was like as it was centeredaround the Southern Pacic Railroad. It gives a particularly vivid account of how theoriginal street grid was meant to function.

Rodriguez, Joseph A. City Against Suburb: The Culture Wars in an American Metropolis.Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.

Selections from this text reveal the regional effects of the BART system, with particular focus on the development of shopping in downtown San Francisco, the movementof jobs and homes to the outlying suburbs, and the economic disenfranchisement ofOakland in the process.

Sadler, Simon. The Situationist City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

This book is a useful account of the Situationist International as an architectural group.Much of the book focuses on how they were successful at drawing public attention tothe issues they felt were affecting urban life in areas of Paris deemed as blighted.

Self, Robert O. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton:Princeton UP, 2003.

This text provides a complete history of Oakland, especially in the years directlyfollowing World War II and into the suburbanization process. It is thus an excellentreference on housing and the history of labor in Oakland.

The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space. Ed. Borden, Iain, Joe Kerr,Jane Rendell, and Alicia Pivaro. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.

The introductory essay to this compendium outlines how architects can understand

cities and effectively intervene in them. The article by Dolores Hayden offers insight onhow to commemorate the public history of under served communities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY



BAKER 8

I. Introduction

A. History of Oakland

B. Contemporary problems facing Oakland

C. American Bablyon

II. Transit - Development

A. Southern Pacic Railroad

B. Key System

C. Bay Bridge

III. Transit - Redevelopment

A. Freeways

B. BART

C. Blight and Eminent Domain

IV. The Situationists

A. Leftist political groups

B. Blight and Media attention

C. New Babylon

V. Conclusion

A. Urban renewal

B. Transit reform

C. Proposal

OUTLINE

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GregBaker_Oct11-2011