OAKLAND: CYPRESS STREET VIADUCT COLLAPSE
After the collapse, the community pushed CalTrans into rerouting the freeway. While the project certainly could have been better—Caltrans rerouted the freeway around West Oakland rather than entirely removing it—the community’s organizing resulted in a massive step in the right direction. The former ROW of the Cypress Street structure has been converted into the tree-lined Mandela Parkway, partially fixing the scar created by the freeway in the first place. Unfortunately, however, much of the former community is permanently lost. Concurrent with the construction of the freeways, "slum clearance" projects demolished hundreds of homes and rezoned the land for industrial uses. In addition, new market-rate housing threatens to gentrify the area and further displace the existing community.
Some progress has been made! Unfortunately, though, it often takes a tragedy to create the political will for change (and these days it seems that even tragedy isn't enough). While there is little political will for the type of wholesale freeway removal that will be required to begin setting this country on a more just and sustainable path, in the case of the Bay Area, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake presented a unique opportunity.
The double-deck Cypress Street Viaduct (I-880)—which decades earlier had cut through the heart of West Oakland, the hub of the city’s black community—collapsed during the earthquake, killing 42 people. Bad design meant the structure had not been seismically sound. Poor rebar placement led to insufficiently reinforced concrete in the columns, which allowed the double-deck structure to sandwich easily (as seen in the bottom of the second image).
Projects like the Mandela Gateway Apartments in the bottom of the first image are another step in the right direction. Replacing a CalTrans parking lot, this project created 168 units of affordable housing. Much remains to be done, however, including developing the laughably large amount of surface parking around BART with more AFFORDABLE housing and beginning to rebuild 7th Street, once West Oakland’s “main street.” (see previous posts for more info).
