East Bay Yesterday

Thanks to its natural deepwater port, San Francisco quickly emerged as the West Coast’s leading metropolis during California’s Gold Rush era. In the decades since, many of Oakland’s development patterns have been influenced by its competitive relationship with the sparkling and sophisticated city across the Bay. As a result, the elitist ambitions of Oakland’s political and business leaders often overlooked, or actively harmed, many of The Town’s existing residents. For wealthy developers dreaming of car-friendly, upscale shopping malls and homogenous office towers, Black neighborhoods, immigrant enclaves, and working class districts were treated as obstacles to be bulldozed. This paradigm pre-dates common usage of the term “gentrification” by generations. Cycles of displacement are one of the main themes explored in “Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption” (UC Press) by Mitchell Schwarzer. As opposed to focusing primarily on individual power brokers, Schwarzer, a professor of architectu