Hella Town
Hella Town

Author: Mitchell Schwarzer

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2022-08-16

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0520391535

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Hella Town reveals the profound impact of transportation improvements, systemic racism, and regional competition on Oakland’s built environment. Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its larger and more glamorous twin, Oakland has a fascinating history of its own. From serving as a major transportation hub to forging a dynamic manufacturing sector, by the mid-twentieth century Oakland had become the urban center of the East Bay. Hella Town focuses on how political deals, economic schemes, and technological innovations fueled this emergence but also seeded the city’s postwar struggles. Toward the turn of the millennium, as immigration from Latin America and East Asia increased, Oakland became one of the most diverse cities in the country. The city still grapples with the consequences of uneven class- and race-based development-amid-disruption. How do past decisions about where to locate highways or public transit, urban renewal districts or civic venues, parks or shopping centers, influence how Oaklanders live today? A history of Oakland’s buildings and landscapes, its booms and its busts, provides insight into its current conditions: an influx of new residents and businesses, skyrocketing housing costs, and a lingering chasm between the haves and have-nots.

Changing Lanes
Changing Lanes

Author: Joseph F.C. Dimento

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-08-29

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0262526778

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The story of the evolution of the urban freeway, the competing visions that informed it, and the emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation. Urban freeways often cut through the heart of a city, destroying neighborhoods, displacing residents, and reconfiguring street maps. These massive infrastructure projects, costing billions of dollars in transportation funds, have been shaped for the last half century by the ideas of highway engineers, urban planners, landscape architects, and architects—with highway engineers playing the leading role. In Changing Lanes, Joseph DiMento and Cliff Ellis describe the evolution of the urban freeway in the United States, from its rural parkway precursors through the construction of the interstate highway system to emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation. DiMento and Ellis describe controversies that arose over urban freeway construction, focusing on three cases: Syracuse, which early on embraced freeways through its center; Los Angeles, which rejected some routes and then built I-105, the most expensive urban road of its time; and Memphis, which blocked the construction of I-40 through its core. Finally, they consider the emerging urban highway removal movement and other innovative efforts by cities to re-envision urban transportation.

Hella Town
Hella Town

Author: Mitchell Schwarzer

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0520381122

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"Oakland is a well-kept secret, a port city of dramatic topography and physical beauty, varied social groups and one-off neighborhoods. In his incisive history, Mitchell Schwarzer examines the development of Oakland's built environment from the onset of the twentieth century to the present, especially in light of its status as a second city playing underdog to glamorous San Francisco across the bay. His book emphasizes the ways transportation networks, housing, industry, commerce, and civic and park projects together shaped a social and political terrain that continues to be defined by class and racial inequalities"--