Oakland Deserves a Tunnel Top!

SB 1000, “The Planning for Healthy Communities Act” authored by California State Senator Connie Leyva in 2022, requires cities and counties to either incorporate an Environmental Justice Element into their General Plans or integrate EJ-related policies, objectives, and goals throughout these documents.

It’s a step in a positive direction, and hopefully the municipalities will do more than just update their General Plans.?Hopefully Mayors and City Councils will actually build off this base and take steps to promote meaningful investment in communities damaged by years of municipal neglect.

The revitalization of Brownfield property in underserved communities will undoubtedly be an aspect of the plans, but in order to ensure redevelopment success urban planners must first set the table and prioritize the removal of the impediments to investment and development their own predecessors created in the first place.?

Here’s an example – Interstate 980 in Oakland CA, a useful arterial joining the East Bay to points north and west was finished in 1976, but like so many freeways constructed at the time, it was constructed through a community already struggling with the effects of post-WW2 deindustrialization and generational wealth-killing “urban renewal” projects.?Today it stands as a significant barrier between West Oakland and downtown, further isolating and economically marginalizing what was once a thriving place for people to live work and play.?I-980 is one of myriad examples of poorly planned California infrastructure that should be brightly illuminated in General Plans as they articulate foundational elements of a meaningful strategy for community reinvestment.

The photograph above shows I-980 and the Doyle Drive reconstruction project in San Francisco that was finished last year.?Doyle Drive has been covered and a park developed over its top.?Tunnel Top, as it’s creatively named, makes an attractive open space that joins the Presidio National Park to Chrissy Field.?The space is well planned, beautiful, and visited by people from near and from far.

Here’s the question, though.?Why doesn’t West Oakland get a Tunnel Top??People have talked about it for years, but so far, nothing has happened.?There’s no shortage of public funding for infrastructure.?Such a head scratcher!

Abandoned and underutilized Brownfield real estate in underserved communities poses both a health risk and an aesthetic impediment to investment.?Interest in redevelopment of these potential community assets is impeded by infrastructure like I-980.?In Oakland, as in cities across the US, focus on and investment in curing history’s mistakes will help make a different kind of There there, a rising tide that will float all the boats.

Urge your electeds to do more than just make plans.??