Architecture and Social Change:

The Struggle for Affordable Housing in Oakland's Uptown Project

Alex Salazar

Summary: Salazar's Architecture and Social Change is a comprehensive case study into community activism and organization. Using Oakland's controversial Uptown Project as a backdrop for socio-economic discrepancy, conflict, and resolution, Architecture and Social Change meets a ubiquitous urban problem of displacement with solutions of community organization. Within this case, we are presented with disconnections within the professions of architecture and planning, urban implications as a result of resistance and retaliation, and courses of action that have been proven to be successful in organizing against displacement. Salazar argues that the disconnections that happen between both architecture and planning practices and the community are initiated within the professions themselves. Salazar argues that mainstream architectural practices often categorize community design as simply a method of acquiring projects through the city planning department. While practices are swelling in size and sophistication further perpetuating competition for larger projects, so does the distance between practice and community. Inadvertently, grassroots and nonprofit developers suffer as their efforts are shadowed by award-winning firms and their visions of grandeur for a community in which they do not know or identify with. Salazar sets forth a call to action for young architects to not only use professional efforts for the progress of their firm, but to donate skills learned to causes of conscious design and development within communities facing renewal and displacement. Salazar address the history of resistance and retaliation as both a benefit and burden to the city of Oakland.The history of Oakland had been marked with forms of resistance such as the forming of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army which both took militant approaches at demanding equality for minorities, equal housing, anti-redlining, while simultaneously providing negative representations of the inner city. This resistance coupled with a decline in wartime production, inflated rent, and the middle to upperclass flight to extremities of the city disproportionately affected development of the inner city. In 1998, Mayor Jerry Brown proposed a 60 million dollar urban renewal project that would bring 10,000 residents into downtown Oakland while displacing thousands of longtime residents who were majority low income households. The most controversial of the proposal is the Uptown Project, a 1040 unit project that would renew and displace hundreds of residents living in single room hotels. At this moment we begin to understand the power of organization against the power of metropolitics. Salazar examines the efforts of the Coalition for Workforce Housing, an umbrella of volunteer architects and planners, community activists and advocates, and its integrated approach in the development of the Uptown Project. Making demands, bringing media pressure to city officials, and acting as public policy watchdogs were the actions of the coalition. From initiating a gentrification tour of areas affected by the project bringing media attention to the response of city officials to making demands of portions of the project to be

dedicated to low income housing including social services made a significant impact in the project. The CWH even hosted a charette that included volunteer practitioners, city representatives, and developers in which testimonies and presentations on funding sources were given as well. While this is only a summary of actions taken on behalf of the CWH, Architecture and Social Change celebrates this case study as a model for other cities facing disproportionate renewal and displacement. Critique: I feel that Salazar positions his argument as a constant shift in blame for urban decomposition and socio-economic neglect. Could this strategy actually mask the genuine intention of submitting a call for consciousness amongst designers, cities governments, and residents? Instead of presenting the case study as a fragmented study of compartmental ignorance and or neglect, perhaps there is a way of integrating the successes that each posses as a basis for encouragement and enlightenment. What I believe lacks in the publication is the condition in which these low-income communities existed previously. While the text does mention the single room hotels that low-income households dwelled in, it did not mention the emotional, psychological, and social experiences of bodies that lived, dwelled, and transitioned through these spaces. Could there have truly been a need for a complete reconceptualization of space and its function that existed at that site? There exists a slippery slope in the term gentrification and slumification as ex-Oakland mayor defines it. While this text can easily gain emotional traction in that any displacement is bad displacement , we must also examine the risks associated with the allowing those pre-Uptown conditions to exist and possibly serve as a catalyst for future deterioration. What I do appreciate about Salazar's arguments is calling out the specific demands of the CWH in that front stoops and windows and the orientation of dwellings towards the street as strategies of providing safety that community encompasses. While this design decision may be a miniscule point brought about in his argument, it resonated with me in that other readings I have investigated fail to address public housing strategies that promote the true experiential nuances of community. Most important I appreciate this publication because it is a call to action providing a case in which strategies have proven successful. There exists a slippery slope between pontification and action in terms of activism with the field of architecture. Even when activism within architecture is recognized ,it is constrained to institutions such as Architecture for Humanity, DesignCorps, PublicArchitecture, etc. Architecture and Social Change challenges this lens by providing possibilities of individual volunteering and donating our services as practitioners to the benefits of those who do not fully discern the power of shaping the spaces in which we inhabit. It is as if Salazar is questioning our efforts and if they are truly in vain or beneficial to the public good. Salazar identifies the powers that are in warfare: political and organizational. While engaging the text it was important for me to keep a discerning eye on embedded, or blatant, structures of power that exist in the built environment. By investigating this case study am I given the opportunity to witness a positive form of utilizing power. This power is a power that not only lies in the collective body of organization, but also within the individual decision to dedicate one's time, talent, and skills to the betterment of the physical environment around us.