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THESIS ARTICLE V.1 ABSTRACT

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 Pacific railroad, and the neighborhood of West Oakland where the station 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 earthquake, 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 financing 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 Emeryville and 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 productspolyrhythmic compositions 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 of these time-spaces in West Oakland?

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IDEOGRAM

REAL
REDEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRAIN

MODERN TRANSIT FREEWAYS STREETS

STREETCARS

CENTRAL STATION / EMERYBAY

OAKLAND

F PATHFINDING

GROWING THE MEDIAN GROVE

DREAM

MENTAL MAP

EVENT

ROUTINE

VIRTUAL
CAPITALISM IS THE FORCE

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GROWING THE MEDIAN GROVE

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 CCAs 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 shops here. The close proximity of residential, commercial, and industrial uses has been a major part of Oaklands development. When it was chosen as the terminal point for the Southern Pacific, what was once the largest Oak grove in the United States began its rapid transformation. 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 once a vast, bustling railyard. The wealthy, especially owners of downtown real estate and relocators from the 1906 earthquake, immediately settled in the hills in Piedmont and areas that were soon annexed by Oakland. They were fleeing the new industrial landscape, but also found bedrock that is more stable in an earthquake and better views. Because of this, Oaklands geological stratification is linked to its social stratification.

USGS online spatial data for Google Earth

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From those redwood laden hills come three rivers that make up the watershed of Oaklands 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 construction of homes across the bay in San Francisco. Once so full of waterfowl and fish that it was a major Ohlone hunting ground and settlement, the channel was slowly filled in accordance with the street grid and railroad lines until 1926 when the tidal gate was installed, finalizing 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 essential 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 fish. Dumping restrictions in the lake remained loose until the 1962, when a severe flood prompted the installation of a new flood gate and scientists stepped in to increase tidal flow in an effort to heal the ecologically imbalanced water body. A massive restoration project, which began with aeration fountains installed in the mid-Nineties, now seeks to further improve tidal flow, build new parks, and reduce 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 fish 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 fill 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 find new work, and overcrowding caught the attention of city officials. 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 first 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, finalized seven years later by the addition of the BART line along the harbor and through the final 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).

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overlay of authors depiction of vehicular paths This distinction between the low-lying, middle class areas of the East Bay, known as the flatlands, 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 the Boulevard running underneath it, containing much of the local traffic 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 traffic, 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 stratification, the signage reflects the perception of the freeways by the assumed origin and destination commuters. Signs on the GroveShafter 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 Interstate 980 when traveling inbound toward downtown Oakland and the Nimitz Freeway (listing

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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-five 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 traffic 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 BART system brought new jobs and ran straight through West Oakland, no jobs were offered to Blacks until federal intervention enforced an affirmative 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 ramifications 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 established 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 stakeholders. 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 fifty years of the same flawed strategy, it is time to reinvent transit in West Oakland for the third time.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Ann Leslie. Undoing the 1950s: The Death and Revival of Lake Merritt. Oakland Magazine. Sept-Oct (2011): 45-49. This article is a concise summary of hydrology issues as they relate to transportation infrastructure. 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 in West Oakland, giving an account of what development was like as it was centered around the Southern Pacific Railroad. It gives a particularly vivid account of how the original 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 movement of jobs and homes to the outlying suburbs, and the economic disenfranchisement of Oakland 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 to the 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 directly following World War II and into the suburbanization process. It is thus an excellent reference 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 on how to commemorate the public history of under served communities.

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OUTLINE
I. Introduction A. History of Oakland B. Contemporary problems facing Oakland C. American Bablyon II. Transit - Development A. Southern Pacific 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