The Strange Case of the Bay Area

Abstract

The San Francisco Bay Area is hard to get one's head around and is frequently misunderstood. It is immense, decentered, sprawling, autotopic, multiracial, divided, and more-a crucible o f the modern suburban and exurban metropolis. It is distinctive in several regards, but illuminating o f the dynamics behind metropolitan geography. Indeed, the Bay Area has been integral to the production o f modern American suburbia and its urban system embodies many o f the contradictions o f the contemporary moment.

Building a better theory of the urban: A response to ‘Towards a new epistemology of the urban?’

“…I am quite sympathetic with Brenner and Schmid's criticism of overly simplistic formulae for New Urban Forms shot from the cannons of empiricist and journalistic studies, and I agree that contemporary urbanization must be conceptualized as 'polymorphic', 'multiscalar' and ever mutating (cf. Walker and Schafran 2015). But they are, by turns, too hasty to dismiss as empiricist all efforts to specify important elements of the changing morphology of cities and too quick to revert to lofty pronouncements such as, '[T]he dawn of planetary urbanization appears to have markedly accentuated and rewoven the differentiations and polarizations that have long been both precondition and product of the urbanization process under capitalism, albeit in qualitatively new configurations whose contours remain extremely difficult to decipher.'…”

A critical physical geography of urban soil contamination

“…In 1978 this same alliance was able to pass the infamous Proposition 13, which severely limited cities' ability to raise property taxes. The resulting decrease in property taxes took a toll on Oakland's already impoverished flatlands, as inflow of revenue was squeezed by more than $14 million (or roughly $50 million in 2013 dollars), leading to facilities closures and cuts to public services (Rhomberg, 2004;Self, 2003;Simon, 2014;Walker and Schafran, 2015). 7 I think this holds true even where relationships of race and class are less tied to a historical and political economic context of home ownership and racial segregation than that which is described here.…”

“…Housing went up rapidly to accommodate the seismic refugees, while development of vast tracts of land followed on the heels of timber extraction in the hills above (Simon and Dooling, 2013). One of the most powerful developers -and the nation's largest at the time -was The Realty Syndicate, which developed nearly 5300 ha in Oakland between 1895 and 1913 (Walker, 2001;Walker and Schafran, 2015). A 1910 ad for one of its subdivisions bluntly explains the process -and market logic -that transformed Oakland's hills and pastures into an eastwardly sprawling urban landscape (see Fig.…”

Financing China's Suburbanization: Capital Accumulation through Suburban Land Development in Hangzhou

“…On the metropolitan scale, city peripheries must enlarge their spaces of engagement through state‐entrepreneurial efforts in response to intensified interregional competition (Cox, ). Resultant urban expansion has been dramatic, with some outlying suburbs now more than 70 miles from the historic centers of their respective cities (Walker and Schafran, ).…”