Oak to 9th -- Undemocratic planning

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Oak to 9th: Lessons for democratic community planning
by Rajiv Bhatia
The Jack London News, Oakland, CA
Sunday, April 09, 2006

The Oakland City Council is about to approve the Oak to Ninth Avenue project—Oakland's largest residential development since World War II. Despite a lengthy planning process, many question whether the project will fulfill the needs and aspirations of Oakland and its residents. But if the public has been involved, why does controversy still exist? And what can it teach us about how well our democracy functions?

Proponents of Oakland Harbor Partners' proposal for 3100 housing units contend that the project advances Smart Growth principles, revitalizes underused and blighted land, saves the public treasury, and provides desperately needed housing. Challenging this perspective are open space, historic preservation, public health, and social justice groups who argue that the project departs from the Oakland General Plan's priorities, blocks meaningful access to the public waterfront, provides housing affordable mainly to the rich, shortchanges public transit and pedestrian safety, ignores needs for a neighborhood school, and eliminates a connection to Oakland's waterfront history.

On one hand, it is easy to resign ourselves to the inevitability of such public controversy around growth and development. I hear many voices calling for decisive action to ensure "progress" and prevent "process paralysis." But perhaps there are feasible 'win-win-win' solutions, and the controversy reflects a deeper failure by government and decision-makers to bring about a consensus of interests on development concerns.

The purpose of city planning is to create the rules and regulations for development that can achieve a community's vision for the future. More often however, city planners face intense political pressure to meet special interest needs, and the public is forced to react to a vision cultivated by landowners and developers.

The public planning process for the Estuary began in the 1990's and led to the adoption of the Estuary Policy Plan within Oakland's General Plan in 1999. The call for recreational uses acknowledged that the lands were part of California's Tidelands Trust which prohibited private ownership.

What happened next, however, raises questions about government commitment to the public, transparency, and accountability in city planning. In 2001, after securing an exclusive negotiating agreement and an option to buy the property, Oakland Harbor Partners convinced the Port of Oakland and the City that in order to meet their investors' profit expectations, they needed to demand greater density of housing, reduce available open space, and demolish the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal. Economic feasibility studies justifying this position were not made available until March 2006, two and a half years after the Port had approved the sale of 64 acres to OHP for $18,000,000 based on a plan for 1700 new residences.

The new plans also required changing the legal status of the land. In 2004, State Senator Don Perata, secured quick passage of SB 1622, authorizing the State Lands Commission to consider an exchange of part of the 64-acre property that is subject to public trust requirements for a property of equal value. Once approved, this legal status change will allow the developer to build condominiums and other residential units on the property. Notably, no one conducted a public hearing in Oakland on the legislation.

In 2003, Oakland Harbor Partners submitted a formal development proposal to the City. The plans had now grown to include 3100 new residences on about 37 of the 64 acre waterfront property. The proposal also requested approval for new zoning rules and changes to many Estuary Policy Plan provisions of the General Plan, abandoning much of the community-based public planning process of the 1990s.

Recognizing that proposal substituted the developer's project for a community planning process, the developers and the City embarked on a series of public and stakeholder meetings, in theory, to identify concerns about the project and implement corrective recommendations. Meeting summaries and transcripts from public meetings in 2005 repeatedly call attention to a range of concerns: abandonment of the past process, insufficient consideration of traffic congestion, public transit needs, pedestrian safety, affordable housing, connections to open space, and the preservation of the Ninth Avenue terminal. Despite similar concerns by diverse groups, significant changes to the development proposal did not occur, and these same concerns remained front and center on March 15, 2006, when the Planning Commission approved the Oak to Ninth proposal.

Thus, looking at the planning process for Oak to Ninth Avenue, it's not surprising that controversy remains. Meaningful public participation means creating the opportunities for all affected people to understand what is at stake, to speak to their needs and concerns, and to have their needs respected by decision-makers. Public participation also includes the promise that the public's contribution will influence the decision. Planning for the Oak to Ninth Avenue development does not appear to keep that promise.

Oakland can do better. Success at the difficult task of gaining consensus among traditional opponents has been illustrated in other areas, such as habitat conservation planning, where landowners, environmentalists, and regulators are brought together to develop compromise solutions regarding endangered species protections. Meaningful public involvement and consensus building are equally important for guiding planning for humans. If we can successfully build such consensus for Oakland's growth and development, precious money and time will not be needed for negotiating special deals with interest groups and mounting public relations campaigns. Resources used up for managing conflict can then be redeployed to build the neighborhoods and cities that we all want and deserve.

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Rajiv Bhatia, MD MPH., is an Oakland resident as well as a public health professional whose research examines the relationships between health, land use, and transportation. He works as the Director of Environmental Health for the City of San Francisco and teaches at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley.