Oakland

On the Waterfront

I got into a good rant at Oakland BPAC this month, on the topic of the Transforming Oakland’s Waterfront Neighborhoods (TOWN) project, the city’s attempt to give away millions of dollars in support of the cynical and extractive effort to let a billionaire (A’s owner John Fisher) enrich himself by building 3,000 luxury condos at Howard Terminal. I got annoyed, because the project ignores the East Oakland waterfront neighborhoods which really need infrastructure, but also because it looks like a bad idea on its own merits.

Map of Oakland showing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Communities of Concern. Deep East Oakland and parts of downtown and West Oakland are mostly dark purple (Highest concern). A few areas in Deep East, and much of Fruitvale is lighter purple (Higher concern). Most of the rest of the flatlands are light purple (High concern). The hills are uncolored (Low concern).

Compromised

Public-private partnerships require compromises. Compromises on terms are natural in such negotiations, but I am concerned with compromises on principles. There are two ways cities compromise their principles in public-private partnerships: bullshit requirements, and bullshit enforcement.

Group of 20 cyclists riding at night on wide road, with center lane painted orange with colorful wheel graphics. The cyclists are taking the right and center lanes. Lights of cars are seen both approaching and going away.

Scraper Bike Halloween ride

I got to spend Halloween with the Original Scraper Bike Team, and it reminded me of why I enjoy riding with them and supporting them, and also, why it’s important.

Racially-biased policing in Oakland (updated with 2019 data)

The Oakland Police Department is legally required to provide racial data on police stops. But they’re not required to make it easy. But they finally released their report.

We don’t have detailed public data on where the stops are occurring, only the police beat. I did some hacky stuff to estimate the racial composition of each police beat using Census data, and tested whether the stops were proportional to the racial makeup. As you might guess, the answer is “no.” In 2019, the problem was marginally better, but it’s still a problem.

Map of Oakland with existing, pending, and proposed Slow Streets highlighted. Four streets are marked as "Completed April 11", four more are "Pending Installation April 17", and approximately 20 more scatters around the city are "Other Streets to be Evaluated"

As I was saying…

I’d been working on my post about disproportionate impact since before COVID-19 hit the Bay Area, but it happened to land in the middle of a broad conversation about the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on poor and working-class BIPOC, and the opening of Oakland’s opportunistic Slow Streets program, which streets advocates across the country are now demanding their cities emulate.

Last night Oakland held its weekly COVID-19 town hall; the segment led by Warren Logan, Libby Schaaf’s Director of Mobility and Interagency Relations, really made the point about how we’re equity-washing streets programs.

Map of Oakland showing median income. All of East Oakland is shaded in red (less than $50K) or orange ($50-$100K). The hills to the north are in blue (>$200K) , while the areas further east and south trend to green and yellow ($100-$200K)

Disproportionality

I keep encountering a trope about how poor people of color are disproportionately impacted by the societal harms related to the topic the author is writing on. Whether it be pollution, housing insecurity, food insecurity, or health issues like asthma, diabetes, and now COVID-19, low-income BIPOC have it worse than anyone else. The trope goes further, to employ the fact of disproportionate disadvantage as a justification for the author’s favored project: a bike lane, or a housing development, or a park or an urban farm or whatever it is the writer thinks is important.

I will note that it’s generally true. BIPOC have been disadvantaged in America since Columbus first showed up, and the effects are still seen throughout out society.

But the problem with disproportionate impact—besides its existence and its effects on BIPOC—is that its very ubiquity limits its usefulness as a tool for policy analysis.

East Oakland and resilience

On Tuesday I did my Tour of Oakland bike ride, and one of the impressions I came away with is that East Oakland, especially Deep East, has been less affected by the shelter-in-place order than the rest of the city. Much of the economy of East Oakland is informal, so shutting down the formal economy doesn’t hit the neighborhood as hard. I saw a few of the Scraper Bike Team kids out, too.

The Douchebag Problem

As an urban critical theorist studying cycling cultures and neighborhood change, I’ve long been curious about the correlation between the terms “fixie” and “douchebag.” My working definition is that douchiness is where entitlement meets cluelessness. The douchebag is a privileged person who feels entitled to that spot at the bar, that condo in the city, that job in tech, and that private bus to work which makes it all possible. And he is clueless about how his entitlement to those things pushes others out of the way.

3-D map of Oakland police beats with colors showing percentage of Black stops of bikes and pedestrians in each beat, with height showing the number of stops in the beat. Highest bars are in Fruitvale, most black in West and East Oakland

Racially-biased policing in Oakland (updated with 2018 data)

Rachel Swan (SF Chronicle) recently published a story about police bias in Oakland, including newly-available data from 2018. Overall, OPD stopped a lot fewer people in 2018, but even after accounting for that, the number of Blacks stopped dropped more than other groups. Eberhardt suggests that the reduction in stops represents a move towards “intelligence-led” policing. I don’t see how the data supports her assertion. In 2018, 31% of all the stops are listed as “IntelligenceLed”, while in 2016-2017 that number was 29%; a small change, certainly not enough to account for a 30%+ drop in the total number of stops.

Looked at on a beat-by-beat basis, you can see that the reduction in stops was broad across the city, but the biggest drops came from West and Deep East Oakland.

Oakland Rideout 2019

Last year I ran into the Oakland Rideout by accident. This year I’m a little more connected, so I heard about it ahead of time and went down to the Beastmode store to check it out. Man, what a spectacular event.

Scraper Bikeway mural day

This weekend the painting work for the Scraper Bikeway on 90th Avenue finally got started. It was a nice event, and it’s great to see the community and city support for an innovative space in Deep East Oakland.

Libraries, bikes and programs

Last week I went on an urban geography bike tour, sponsored by the Oakland Museum and led by Mana and Sadie from the Oakland Library. We learned about railroad history in Oakland, and got lucky with lovely weather to visit Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. As a cycling urban geographer, I love that kind of stuff, and I love that people in the Library also see the bicycle as a tool for contemplating the city. I’m curious about how this alignment of the library and cycling programs in Oakland has arisen.

Let’s Bike Oakland officially adopted

The new Oakland bike plan was officially adopted by the Oakland City Council last night. I have my critiques, of course, but I also want to give credit where it’s due. The plan represents probably the best effort possible in our current planning environment, and it’s largely the result of dedicated work by some of the folks involved who pushed back against structures which are not designed to address topics outside of infrastructure. Because of that, there’s a lot more in the plan about community programs and equity than would ever have been the case otherwise.

Ella Baker Center open house

I’ve long admired the work of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and my current pursuits are bringing me more into contact with their work. Executive Director Zachary Norris sits on the Oakland BPAC and on the subcommittee on policing which I’m contributing to, and the Center also supported last week’s Bike4Justice ride. They have moved all over Oakland, but recently managed to participate in purchasing a building in Fruitvale which will provide them housing security, and they had an open house event to celebrate. I was glad to get the opportunity to hear Norris talk about his work. Cycling is only a tangential concern for Ella Baker, but there were a number of places where Zachary’s remarks intersected with the Bike Lab’s work.

Bike4Justice

RB posted a notification about a Bike4Justice ride-out in support of DuJuan Armstrong, a young man who died in custody at Santa Rita courthouse. Juneteenth seemed like a good day for a protest against police oppression, so I wobbled down to Lake Merritt to join in the ride, which was organized by the Urban Peace Movement and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

The gathered group of about 30 riders chanted “Justice for DuJuan” (Armstrong, who died at Santa Rita last year) and “No Justice, No Peace”, as we took over intersections around the Alameda County Courthouse.

Map of Oakland, displaying the large number of stops in West and East Oakland, and the generally large proportion of African-Americans stopped in all police beats

Biking while Black: Racial bias in Oakland policing

After his arrest, Najari asked me to help out with research and data analysis on racially-biased policing in Oakland. Since then I’ve also been providing information to the team working on Let’s Bike Oakland, the bike plan update, and found that 68% of bike/ped stops in Oakland were of Blacks, who comprise 24% of the population. OPD argues that the bias is spatial rather than racial; they police more in Black neighborhoods because that’s where the crime is. Does that claim hold up under scrutiny? It turns out the answer is no: Blacks are significantly more likely to be stopped no matter where they are in the city.

Exploring geographies

I love how cycling changes my experience of moving through the city; it’s part of what’s informed my Bike Lab work from the start. And I love sharing that experience with others, which is why I’ve been running urban geography rides for WOBO. The urban stories of investment and disinvestment, advantage and disadvantage come to light as you ride through neighborhoods at a human pace. This week, WOBO referred to me a wonderful opportunity to lead a group of officials and planners from Portland who were in town to meet with local groups and learn about our planning issues. I took them off into West Oakland.

Three maps, showing non-white population in Oakland along International, MacArthur, and Skyline Boulevards.

MLK Way: Conclusion

The biggest lesson I take from this project is that urban Black communities (and disadvantaged communities in general) have complex challenges, and those of us who care about equity and social justice need to grapple with that complexity. “Gentrification” is a reductive term which avoids meaningful engagement. While all of this is definitely Black History, it’s also White history. Those of us who believe in social justice as a concept, and who have benefitted from racist policies advantaging us and our families, need to learn to participate in social justice as a practice.

Map showing increase in Hispanic population in San Antonio, by census tract, with northeastern tracts much greater than western tracts

MLK Way part 7: Shifting poverty

To this point I’ve been mentioning only White and Black populations, but the most substantial demographic shifts nationally are among Hispanic populations. There has been a net influx of international Hispanics, and the natural population growth rate is also higher than Whites and Blacks.

As a population, Hispanics are wealthier than Blacks but still far less wealthy than Whites. In many cities, Blacks and Hispanics are now competing for whatever inexpensive housing exists. In these seven study cities, this manifests as an increase in total population, combined with a drop in Black population, a rise in HIspanic population, and a drop in real income.

Map of southeastern Washington DC showing changes in demographic composition from 2000-2017

MLK Way part 6: Development without displacement

The Holy Grail of community economic development is “development without displacement”: reinvestment in decayed neighborhoods which can provide long-time residents with new opportunities, without forcing them from their homes. It’s hard to achieve in a market-driven society, especially one where home ownership rates and household wealth are as wildly disparate as they are here in America. But it’s not impossible; six cities in the study qualify.

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