[sudo-discuss] WOSP – City of Oakland’s Plan for Gentrification: A Target For Anti-Displacement Activity : Indybay

[Gregg Horton]

Well hackerspaces along with pop-up shops, yoga studios, artisanal
anything, third wave coffee shops and food trucks are some of the horsemen
of the gentripocalypse
On May 17, 2014 10:13 AM, "Romy Snowyla" <romy at snowyla.com> wrote:

> So I'm curious .. Once sudoroom moves out of it's current location what
> hot education tech start up moves in? I guess we are the frontline of the
> gentrification wave.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 17, 2014, at 9:30 AM, Sonja Trauss <sonja.trauss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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 at 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.wordpress.com/2014/03/1888463_10151853655272163_918216235_n.jpg>
>>
>> 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/2014/03/opportunitysiteswosp.jpg>
>>
>> “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-unveiling-her-own-5292079.php>while 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/PlanningZoning/OAK028334>(really 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/fig31wosp.jpg>
>>
>> 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/2014/03/fig327thstreetwosp.png>
>>
>> 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_Population_and_Housing.pdf
>>
>> #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
>>
>
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