3 ms·

Oakland wants you to stop calling it the “Next Brooklyn”

9 points by bootload 12y ago

bootload 12y ago
"... Oakland has long been at the center of a national conversation about equity, but it’s quickly becoming a more enticing beacon for venture capitalism than for social justice. ..."
ps4fanboy 12y ago
I honestly dont get this at all, If I could choose where I live I wouldnt choose where I live now, but I live where I can afford to live and if it became to expensive I would move, failing that I would buy a place where I wanted to stay then no one can make me move. The entitlement in this article is astounding.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Oakland, too, had a choice when the banks came for those foreclosed homes. It chose not to act while thousands of the city’s most vulnerable residents were pushed out of their homes. What choice was this, exactly? If it was to withhold assistance from banks seeking to foreclose, as the tone suggests, then that's flat-out wrong - evictions are legal actions that take place at the county level and are enforced by county sheriffs, and Alameda county is an awful lot bigger than Oakland - it's over 800 square miles, more than 10x the size of Oakland. Maybe the author meant the city could have approved more affordable housing development projects within its boundaries? My experience from attending planning committee meetings is that virtually any kind of development, large or small, is met with a storm of objections from local neighbors, and the planning committee seems to have an inordinate fondness for micromanagement, going so far as to specify paint choices on large buildings in pursuit of aesthetic harmony. Some of this is in response to California's poorly-written and seriously overbroad environmental quality law (CEQA) which allows people to file lawsuits over virtually anything. This article has its heart in the right place (in terms of wanting to see the best outcome for the greatest possible number of people) but its factual grounding is rather poor. Another example is the claim that there's no supermarket in West Oakland, and people must make the trek to the neighboring municipality of Emeryville. Well, this is technically true, but when you look at the map you can see that Emeryville juts into the center of West Oakland. Going there to get groceries does not strike me as such a big deal because it's only about 20-30 minutes' walk from any residential neighborhood in West Oakland - I know this because it's my nearest supermarket, and I bring my groceries home in one of those fold-up shopping carts when I go there as neither my wife nor I like to drive and so we don't have a car. West Oakland is also well-served by public transport, including a free shuttle-bus operated by the Emeryville business community that runs from that shopping center to MacArthur BART station in Oakland. People who don't want to shop there also have the option of a smaller Trader Joe's (also technically in Emeryville, but about 1/2 mile closer to the center of West Oakland) or taking BART one stop and going to the Smart'n'Final in Downtown Oakland (an area that's much more accessibly from West Oakland than from where I live, farther north). The main downside of not having a supermarket in this part of Western Oakland (there are many others in other parts of the city) is that the sales tax revenue goes to Emeryville rather than Oakland - but then Emeryville also shoulders the burden of keeping up the roads around that busy shopping park, and so forth. In practice, the municipal location of the supermarket is irrelevant - it's not like they check people's passports, and living only a few blocks from the Oakland/Emeryville border I can assure you that there isn't any big sociopolitical discontinuity when you cross the street from one to the other. The only big difference I've noticed is that there seems to be a larger number of apartment buildings in Emeryville, and construction permits and development projects seem to get approved faster there (possibly because it's smaller, and also because development is less politicized there).
- bootload 12y ago
  "... Going there to get groceries does not strike me as such a big deal because it's only about 20-30 minutes' walk from any residential neighborhood in West Oakland ..." 30 minutes walk is a deal breaker and from the article: "... Oakland doesn’t have the tax money it needs. Retail is broken here, ..." The broken part of settler cities (I'm from Melbourne) is ppl living without walking access to amenities. As a kid I lived within 5min of shops as I do now. Have access to buses, train, tram? If you don't you have to rely on private transport & that is bad.

9 points by bootload 12y ago

"... Oakland has long been at the center of a national conversation about equity, but it’s quickly becoming a more enticing beacon for venture capitalism than for social justice. ..."

ps4fanboy 12y ago

I honestly dont get this at all, If I could choose where I live I wouldnt choose where I live now, but I live where I can afford to live and if it became to expensive I would move, failing that I would buy a place where I wanted to stay then no one can make me move. The entitlement in this article is astounding.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Oakland, too, had a choice when the banks came for those foreclosed homes. It chose not to act while thousands of the city’s most vulnerable residents were pushed out of their homes. What choice was this, exactly? If it was to withhold assistance from banks seeking to foreclose, as the tone suggests, then that's flat-out wrong - evictions are legal actions that take place at the county level and are enforced by county sheriffs, and Alameda county is an awful lot bigger than Oakland - it's over 800 square miles, more than 10x the size of Oakland. Maybe the author meant the city could have approved more affordable housing development projects within its boundaries? My experience from attending planning committee meetings is that virtually any kind of development, large or small, is met with a storm of objections from local neighbors, and the planning committee seems to have an inordinate fondness for micromanagement, going so far as to specify paint choices on large buildings in pursuit of aesthetic harmony. Some of this is in response to California's poorly-written and seriously overbroad environmental quality law (CEQA) which allows people to file lawsuits over virtually anything. This article has its heart in the right place (in terms of wanting to see the best outcome for the greatest possible number of people) but its factual grounding is rather poor. Another example is the claim that there's no supermarket in West Oakland, and people must make the trek to the neighboring municipality of Emeryville. Well, this is technically true, but when you look at the map you can see that Emeryville juts into the center of West Oakland. Going there to get groceries does not strike me as such a big deal because it's only about 20-30 minutes' walk from any residential neighborhood in West Oakland - I know this because it's my nearest supermarket, and I bring my groceries home in one of those fold-up shopping carts when I go there as neither my wife nor I like to drive and so we don't have a car. West Oakland is also well-served by public transport, including a free shuttle-bus operated by the Emeryville business community that runs from that shopping center to MacArthur BART station in Oakland. People who don't want to shop there also have the option of a smaller Trader Joe's (also technically in Emeryville, but about 1/2 mile closer to the center of West Oakland) or taking BART one stop and going to the Smart'n'Final in Downtown Oakland (an area that's much more accessibly from West Oakland than from where I live, farther north). The main downside of not having a supermarket in this part of Western Oakland (there are many others in other parts of the city) is that the sales tax revenue goes to Emeryville rather than Oakland - but then Emeryville also shoulders the burden of keeping up the roads around that busy shopping park, and so forth. In practice, the municipal location of the supermarket is irrelevant - it's not like they check people's passports, and living only a few blocks from the Oakland/Emeryville border I can assure you that there isn't any big sociopolitical discontinuity when you cross the street from one to the other. The only big difference I've noticed is that there seems to be a larger number of apartment buildings in Emeryville, and construction permits and development projects seem to get approved faster there (possibly because it's smaller, and also because development is less politicized there).

bootload 12y ago
"... Going there to get groceries does not strike me as such a big deal because it's only about 20-30 minutes' walk from any residential neighborhood in West Oakland ..." 30 minutes walk is a deal breaker and from the article: "... Oakland doesn’t have the tax money it needs. Retail is broken here, ..." The broken part of settler cities (I'm from Melbourne) is ppl living without walking access to amenities. As a kid I lived within 5min of shops as I do now. Have access to buses, train, tram? If you don't you have to rely on private transport & that is bad.