This is an Orwellian notion of anti-displacement.
In the face of increased population these people seek to build nothing
new. I really can't understand what they think is going to happen when the
population goes up but the housing stock doesn't.
Sf tried that! Look what's happening there! It sucks!
This is the saddest thing to me because all efforts like this do, is make
building more expensive and difficult. That means the only things that get
built are at higher price points. Or, if they're slightly successful,
whole projects are blocked, and they miss the opportunity to get capital to
build something useful, instead of something stupid like a new calendaring
app.
On Friday, May 16, 2014, Romy Snowyla <romy(a)snowyla.com> wrote:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/04/18/18754399.php
WOSP – City of Oakland’s Plan for Gentrification: A Target For
Anti-Displacement Activity : Indybay
[image:
1888463_10151853655272163_918216235_n]<http://advancethestruggle.files.w…
Advertisement for Public Release of WOSP in Feb. 2014
March 29, 2014
*Snapshot of the State and Capital in the Bay Area*
If the Bay Area’s economy was compared to every other national economy in
the world, it would be the 19th largest. The Bay has the highest GDP per
capita in the entire United States, and even outpaces London and Singapore.
It captures 40% of the entire flow of venture capital in the US (p11),
which constitutes a higher amount of capital than that captured during the
dot.com boom. While the Bay accounts for only 2.4% of the total jobs in
the US, it has 12% of the computer & electronics manufacturing, 10.3% of
software development, and 8.3% of internet related jobs (p13.) Seven of the
top 10 social media companies are here – Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter,
Linkedin, Zynga, and Yelp. In short, the Bay is home to one of the highest
concentrations of capital in the world and mapping out the composition of
capital is key for us to situate ourselves as we continue to engage in
class combat. *(Footnote #1)*
The regional state is well aware of its place within the world economy.
Over the past years, city politicians from the greater Bay Area have come
together to generate a 30 year strategy about how to restructure the
region’s housing, employment, and transportation structures. Plan Bay
Area <http://onebayarea.org/plan-bay-area.html> (PBA) was developed by
the Association of Bay Area Governments <http://www.abag.ca.gov/>(ABAG)
to carry out the tasks of determining how the state can support and
facilitate the accumulation of capital throughout the region. In order to
grease the wheels of the local capitalist economy, the PBA aims to
redevelop housing and transit throughout the Bay; New units are set to be
built, new transportation “hubs” developed, and both of these projects are
to be coordinated across single cities and the bay area as a whole.
PBA aims to align the various metropolitan areas of the Bay in their
development of housing to match projected increases in employment.
Internet, computer and electronics manufacturing, along with professional,
scientific and technical services are accounting for some of the largest
contributors to job creation here. PBA states that between early 2011 and
late 2013 the Bay Area added more than 200,000 jobs, an increase of 7.5
percent that is well above the state’s average of 4.5%. PBA is projecting
that this area will continue to outpace the rest of California and the US
in its share of job growth due to the heavy concentration of tech related
industries which forms part of the economic base of Bay Area political
economy. *(Footnote#2)*
*West Oakland Specific Plan – One Part of Capital/State’s Total Plan*
[image:
opportunitysitesWOSP]<http://advancethestruggle.files.wordpress.com/2014…
“Opportunity Sites”
We find ourselves in a city that’s clearly at the crosshairs of the
system’s plans for intentional development and displacement: highly
concentrated capital in the Bay Area and projections of millions of jobs
being created in the next 10 years; a strategic plan by city politicians
across the Bay to house these new high wage workers within its multiple
cities; and the ongoing displacement of low wage workers and unemployed
people. This is the situation Oakland Mayor Jean Quan references when she
states that she’s seeking to bring in 10,000 new residents to
Oakland<http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-Mayor-Quan-unveili…
saying nothing about keeping long term residents and working class
people in Oakland.
The city of Oakland has developed a number of “Specific Plans” for the
Coliseum, Lake Merritt and West Oakland in order to smoothly facilitate and
attract investment by retail and tech companies, develop new housing units,
and restructure the local transportation systems. The West Oakland
Specific Plan,
WOSP<http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/PBN/OurOrganization/Plannin…
Jean Quan?!), is one local example of the city’s plan for carrying
out this program of urban capitalist development *(footnote #3). *
[image:
fig31wosp]<http://advancethestruggle.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/fig31wo…
Emeryville part 2?
The West Oakland Specific Plan is the City of Oakland’s plan to help
developers and incoming high wage populations (both different types of
gentrifiers – *see footnote #4*) speed up the accumulation of capital in
Oakland. It essentially acts as a one stop shop for financial and retail
capitalists to invest in West Oakland without having to go through the
“nuisance” of making Environmental Impact Reports – EIRs – or dealing with
zoning regulations. Instead of having new developments require zoning, and
environmental impact regulations, the WOSP does it all for them and
therefore saves money for the developers, retail chains, and financial
interests seeking to build in and make massive profits in West Oakland. It
is the state facilitating the accumulation of capital and dispossessing
long term, and historically black, residents in the process by bringing in
new investment that will increase property values while doing nothing to
keep rents for existing residents from going up.
The WOSP highlights four “Opportunity Sites” as the specific areas of
West Oakland to be developed. The Four areas are the Mandela/West Grand
area, the San Pablo corridor, the area around the BART station on 7th
Street and the area next to the Port of Oakland around 3rd Street. These
“Opportunity Sites” are determined to be the specific places where transit,
new housing, light industrial and retail outlets will be developed.
In order to “revitalize” these areas, the architects of WOSP have
identified various barriers to development such as “graffiti,” “homeless
encampments,” “crime of all types,” and “blight.” In the eyes of the
architects of WOSP, once the barriers to development are gone there will be
a flourishing of “new growth.”
[image:
fig327thstreetWOSP]<http://advancethestruggle.files.wordpress.com/2014/0…
Right . . .
What does this growth look like? A glance at the video accompanying the
presentation of the WOSP to the Oakland Planning Commission featured the
familiar architecture and spatial layout of Emeryville mixed in with your
typical Whole Foods store. The development that’s presented is about
attracting an influx of capital investment – retail, industrial, and high
wage residents – and transforming West Oakland into a center of commerce
for a new set of residents. New growth is about raising property values and
attracting new residents and businesses, not improving the situations of
those who already live there.
But the planners who put WOSP together would disagree. They are quick to
point out that they have “Chapter 9,” a section of the report that
addresses equity and social justice issues. This is where they explicitly
state that they hope to mitigate the “impact of neighborhood change and
displacement on longstanding residents and businesses” (WOSP 9-1.) However,
what one finds in Chapter 9 is little more than an inventory of existing
city agencies and non-profit organizations that provide services to working
class people. Rather than focusing on the needs of long-term and working
class residents, WOSP is re-writing the rules for developers and financial
capital to ease their access the city by re-writing the zoning regulations
and providing them with a pre-packaged Environmental Impact Report. All
that’s provided to working class people and renters in West Oakland is a
list of the declining base of social service programs that already exist.
*Strategic Orientations for Fighting WOSP*
We seek the defeat of the WOSP in all its forms. Given the multiple
challenges facing West Oakland, the burgeoning national and international
debates around the hyper-gentrification of the Bay Area, and the ways in
which the West Oakland Specific Plan is being promoted, we recognize the
urgent need for a radical critique and effective action against
gentrification and displacement. However, given these circumstances, we
also recognize that simply being “anti-development” is not the most
effective strategy, nor is it adequate to addressing the structural and
conjunctural problems in West Oakland that have both shaped adverse
conditions for local residents and made it a ripe ground for gentrification.
Our orientation towards this struggle is built around the following core
strategic goals:
*Reframing the Discussion About Development*: We want to re-frame the
discussion about gentrification and improvements to neighborhoods. The city
and investors want to convince us that they know what’s best for West
Oakland, and that they can make the type of improvements that residents
really want. The truth is that West Oakland has been devastated by decades
of economic and racial exclusion – for instance, the creation of the West
Oakland BART station destroyed 7th Street as a center of culture, black
owned businesses, and centralized location for community interaction; the
980 freeway cut off West Oakland from downtown so that white city officials
could distance themselves from black “blighted” neighborhoods in the 1970s;
the creation of the Post Office on 7th street bulldozed three blocks of
residential housing with no relocation support for residents.
Residents have real desires and needs for their community to be better
served, and “no improvement” is not a viable option as an alternative to
gentrification. However, though we do want improvements, we don’t want the
type of “improvements” that the city and its developer allies seek to
impose on us. The development plans of the city and capitalist real estate
developers are NOT the way to create safer, more vibrant, and economically
dynamic neighborhoods. (Footnote #5)
*Gentrification as a Question of Power*: Many people in West Oakland
want development, so the question isn’t so much do we want improvements or
not. The question should be: who gets to benefit and make use of the
developments? Is it going to be long term black, latino residents and
working class people, or middle class, often white, newcomers who landlords
and developers cater to in order to accumulate high rents. Long term
residents want development like well serviced and fully funded schools and
parks, fixed roads, improved plumbing, clean air, and access to affordable
healthy foods, while developers want development that looks like biotech
campuses, an increased police presence, and cafes that sell expensive
coffee. Some of the questions we seek to put out there are: On whose terms
will urban development proceed? Who decides what is implemented and where?
Who benefits from urban development?
*Community Control over Community Development*: If gentrification and
urban development is an issue of power, therefore, we argue that the only
way towards a positive outcome in West Oakland is for the people themselves
to take control of the redevelopment process. ‘Community input’ in an
otherwise top-down, technocratic planning process has proven to be a
useless endeavor – mere lip service to inclusivity and equity. The real
needs of the poor, black and brown and working-class communities in West
Oakland have either been ignored, or worse, twisted and used to justify the
aggressive neoliberal development strategies put forward by WOSP. By
invoking the classic Black Panther slogan of ‘community control,’ we are
also recognizing the need for a strategy that is locally rooted in
Oakland’s Black proletarian constituency and its historical memory of
struggle; one that emphasizes and prioritizes the material needs and
political empowerment of the most oppressed sectors of urban society. *(Footnote
#6)*
Our on-the-ground strategy is to mobilize activists and community members
on two fronts:
*Kill the WOSP*: We seek to build a strong, vocal force of opposition to
the West Oakland Specific Plan by staging interventions at all city
planning meetings, developing and presenting a clear and coherent critique
of the Plan at every point in the approval process. The mass displacement
and “hyper-gentrification” of San Francisco has given us the opportunity to
show what this new mode of urban development looks like, and why it must be
stopped: “West Oakland Will NOT Be the Next San Francisco!” The immediate
goal is to defeat or delay the final vote on WOSP’s Draft Plan and EIR.
We’ve approached this goal thus far by organizing small, but vocal,
interventions at the presentation of the WOSP to the city Planning
Commission and the Parks and Recreation Commission.
*A People’s Plan for West Oakland*: As an alternative to capitalist
visions of urban development, we plan to deeply engage communities in
organization and dialogue towards articulating their own vision of the kind
of city they want to live and work in. Inspired by urban struggles across
the world, we are attempting to facilitate the organization and empowerment
of residents to create urban space themselves; to foster the imagination
and social power capable of asserting the power to shape the city according
to the needs, wants, and rhythms of their everyday lives. This is a
longer-term community planning process that will hopefully be realized in a
radical, innovative, and concrete strategy for West Oakland’s
redevelopment. *(Footnote #6)*
—————
*Footnotes:*
#1: All statistics and information in this paragraph drawn from the “Bay
Area Job Growth to 2040” document prepared for the Association of Bay Area
Governments –
http://www.onebayarea.org/pdf/3-9-12/CCSCE_Bay_Area_Job_Growth_to_2040.pdf
#2: All information about Plan Bay Area taken from their “Draft Forecast
of Jobs, Population, and Housing” document –
http://onebayarea.org/pdf/Draft_Plan_Bay_Area/Draft_PBA_Forecast_of_Jobs_Po…
#3: By “urban capitalist development” we refer to the ways in which city
policies and programs are directed toward the benefit of businesses that
engage in retail, financial, and real-estate growth. Cities in the Bay Area
are strategic sites for businesses to invest in because higher wage workers
are moving here in order to work at tech companies in Silicon Valley and
San Francisco. This facilitates the creation of a base of consumers who buy
expensive commodities (coffee, clothes, condos, cupcakes, etc) and pay
higher rents. All of this helps businesses in the city generate flows of
money, which then provides the city with a higher sales tax and residential
tax base, hence the “urban” in capitalist development. The city deals with
its declining budget from the state by welcoming wealthier residents,
rather than fighting banks, ports, developers and corporations for higher
tax rates that could fund services for working class people.
#4: By “gentrifiers” we refer to three groups: a.) the capitalist
developers who flip houses, redevelop properties, build condos, and
rent/sell their properties to high waged workers and wealthy people; b.)
the state bureaucrats such as city planners and other planning agents who
produce documents such as WOSP in order to attract capital to the city, as
well as passing racist laws and zoning regulations; and c.) the individuals
whose high wages allow them to pay higher rents and in an overall sense
benefit from redevelopment projects such as these. This third group, the
individual gentrifiers, is controversial because it is argued that these
people do not accumulate capital in the same way that private developers
do. While this is true, we still refer to them as gentrifiers because of
the problematic role that they play once they move into a neighborhood.
Some issues associated with high wage workers moving into neighborhoods
such as West Oakland involve calling and collaborating with the police on a
more frequent basis than long-term residents and organizing private
security firms to patrol neighborhoods. Additionally, many of these
“individual” gentrifiers also are/become petty-bourgeois business owners of
high priced organic food shops, cafes, and clothing boutiques. We recognize
the challenge of using gentrifier as a term because it encompasses such a
wide range of people and lacks specificity, while also seeing the value of
its accessibility. Throughout this essay we’ve attempted to refer to
specific groups, but we still retain use of gentrifier term because of its
wide use.
#5: We completely acknowledge that there are many different sets of
people who compose any community. Our understanding of the needs and
desires of residents comes from our experiences working alongside long-term
residents, organizing around housing issues, working with young people in
the community, and researching the WOSP and its background alongside people
whose lives are directly affected by the plan. Putting forward the “needs”
of West Oakland as a whole is an ongoing project that many are already
engaged in and that we seek to support.
#6: When we say “community control” and “people’s plan” we refer to
processes where working class and black/brown residents, unemployed people,
and youth put out their visions of how the community should be changed.
Historically, terms like “community” and “the people” have been used in
ways that obscure and diminish class differences within a given set of
people, and have also been used in ways t
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org