The recent controversies surrounding an upscale housing development on Rincon Hill in San Francisco and a waterfront development plan in Oakland demonstrate the centrality of land use and development issues to Bay Area politics. The reasons for this are relatively straightforward: Like other major urban areas in the United States, the Bay Area is undergoing a profound socio-economic transformation that has restructured how and where people work and live, thereby reshaping cities, neighborhoods, and the life chances of residents. This political and economic climate renders ever more crucial the role of professionals in architecture and community design.
It has become cliché to talk about the “new global economy” in any discussion of American cities. But revolutionary innovations in information and transportation technologies have dramatically increased the scale of international transactions. As a result, urban economies have evolved from the production of goods to the production of corporate services. Whether we refer to this as deindustrialization or off-shoring, the reality is that stable middle class employment in the manufacturing sector has largely disappeared. In its stead is a polarized economy organized around corporate and personal services.
As transnational corporations produce unimaginable wealth, entire sectors have emerged to service the body corporate: international finance; real estate; insurance, technical, legal, and corporate consulting firms proliferate. At the same time, gleaming high rise office complexes require janitorial services and the denizens of these spaces demand salons, stylists, baristas, even professional pet attendants. It is no mystery what kinds of jobs are being produced.
Empirical evidence suggests that wage inequality in the Bay Area and the nation, already high, is increasing. Even a cursory examination of Oakland and San Francisco reveals profound pockets of poverty juxtaposed against neighborhoods of enormous wealth. Our cities face rising homicide rates and increasing homelessness. Once nearly extinct, sweatshops mushroom in once abandoned industrial sites. And the revival of human trafficking reaches epidemic proportions.
At the same time, signs point to an urban renaissance. Where once downtowns were thought to be in a downward spiral of physical decay and social disarray, today they are reviving. High-end retail and entertainment centers cater to national and international tourists and expanding central business districts and downtown housing developments reshape the profile of urban skylines. But with this come the forces of gentrification. Small businesses must compete with global retail chains and residents struggle to keep pace with rising housing costs. Accordingly, San Francisco has experienced an outward migration of families with children and the African American population has declined precipitously.
The central political questions facing cities center on the management of these competing socio-economic forces. Our politics is marked by bitter battles over land use and urban form because seemingly mundane issues of zoning ordinances and conditional use permits conceal the deeper questions: In whose image ought a city be constructed and in whose interests ought a city be governed?
Progressive cities like Oakland and San Francisco have sought to adopt a range of public policies designed to stem displacement and enhance the viability of urban spaces. But they do so with little state and federal assistance and without a clear consensus among the citizenry.
The role of urban planners, architects, developers, and specialists in community design should not be understated. The most creative among this group are discovering and implementing new mechanisms to develop urban communities that are economically, environmentally, socially, and ethically sustainable.
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