Social Justice, Regional Economics at Odds in Downtown Oakland Plan
- Josh Stephens
- Apr 25, 2016
- 8 min read
Uber has finally arrived in Oakland. Not the ride service - that's been around for a while - but rather the company itself, which recently moved its headquarters from San Francisco to a former Sears department store. What would be a triumph of economic development for many cities is making many Oaklanders nervous. They fear that what Uber has done to the taxi industry, wealthy residents and boutique businesses might do to Oakland's working-class heritage. Partially in response to these changes, the city is finally devising a specific plan for Downtown Oakland - for the first time in the city's history. Community activists hope that the plan will strike a balance between promoting Oakland as a regional hub and protecting existing residents, many of whom are African-Americans and Latinos living below the poverty line. If any city can figure out how to use a land use plan to promote social equity, it's Oakland. The city has not only a diverse population - socioeconomically and ethnically - but also a long history of social activism. "I want to believe that Oakland is going to be very intentional about how we crack the code on that," said McElhaney. The tech companies moving into downtown Oakland are encountering an antique urban fabric. For the entirety of its 164-year history, the area has gotten along, for better or worse, without a specific plan. Market forces and citywide regulations led to the relatively ordinary collection of offices, government buildings, commercial offerings, and infrastructure that compose the skyline of the Bay Area's second city. The area's public realm is weathered, private development has been haphazard, and sense of place is lacking. Given the pace of change in the Bay Area, a plan cannot come quickly enough. "In an ideal world, I'd have said our intentional planning should have happened 10 years ago to get ready for the boom that's happening now," said City Council Member Lynette McElhaney, who represents part of downtown. As office and residential rents in San Francisco and the Peninsula have soared, demand for Oakland's relatively affordable office space and housing only just begun to rise. Formerly middle-income neighborhoods like Temescal and Broadway-Valedez are in the throes of gentrification, with ever more professionals seeking refuge from San Francisco's stratospheric rental rates. Downtown presents possibly the last, best chance to embrace change deliberately while avoiding displacement and other objectionable impacts of gentrification. Called Plan Downtown Oakland, the plan is expected to encompass everything from housing targets to support for the arts to a possible cap park over the 980 Freeway. The planning process launched with a series of community meetings in mid-2015. An alternatives report was recently published, and a draft plan is expected by August. Adoption could come as early as October. It is being funded in part by a $750,000 grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. It has some heavy lifting to do. Downtown Oakland itself is diverse, with a half-dozen neighborhoods surrounding the City Center, extending from Lake Merritt to the port. In 2013, downtown had 73,000 jobs and over 21,000 residents. Using projections by the Association of Bay Area Governments, the plan anticipates the addition of 12,309 new households and 31,224 jobs to downtown by 2040. A report by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) encourages the city to try to exceed those numbers, envisioning 15,000 households and 50,000 jobs. In the early 2000s with then-Mayor Jerry Brown promoted a largely successful campaign to boost the area's population by 10,000 residents. But that effort, which resulted in roughly 5,500 units built or approved during his eight-year tenure, was nothing like the overhaul that is now long overdue. The decision to create a specific plan comes along at a moment when Oakland has begun to embrace its role, and opportunity, as one of the hubs of the country's hottest regional economy. "The key here is understanding the zeitgeist of the Bay Area right now, about tremendous transformation, huge wealth moving in, prices rising quickly, demographic shift, a sense that cities are evolving," said SPUR Policy Director Egon Terplan. The "new" Oakland is symbolized by the arrival of the transportation network company Uber, which moved its headquarters from San Francisco to a former Sears department store. While relocations like this may be considered a victory for economic development, some Oaklanders are wary. Providing new market-rate housing for highly paid tech workers and creative office space for their companies does not rank highly among the priorities of many community activists. Between 2000 and 2010, Oakland lost 25 percent of its African-American residents, dropping to around 100,000. A recent UC-Berkeley report contends that most downtown is either "undergoing displacement" or experiencing "advanced gentrification," and activists fear that any plan that increases Oakland's regional prominence will do so at the expense of longtime locals. In downtown especially, low-income residents have long taken advantage of older multifamily rentals, which are rent-stabilized, and places like single-room occupancy hotels.
