Extra

It has been said, in the Berkeley city council, as a statement of policy, that the planning department will allow neighborhoods and individuals to have input into the overall plan for the San Pablo Ave. corridor (and similarly for the other development zones in Berkeley), but that neighborhood residents won’t be able to participate in planning specific projects or buildings. Abstract planning is available to the people, but site-by-site planning is not.. 

Regardless of whether such a policy is legitimate or not, in a democracy it is just plain wrong. 

It is not only wrong because it represents an inherent injustice. It is wrong because it demonstrates the degree to which the city council will take one side of a conflict of interests, where it should seek to balance thoses interests. Not to do so, to give them lipservice without practical effect, creates hierarchy. The interests in conflict here, to the point of incommensurability, are those between the neighborhoods and the developers. 

Corporate interests and their outcomes

The developers’ main interest is to build buildings with a high recapitalization potential – that is, buildings that will bring a high resale price. Recapitalization will be greater if the building has high income rental units, or high condo prices, or is part of a general process of gentrification. As rent levels rise, as property values rise, as more high income buildings are built nearby, a buildings’ recapitalization potential increases. 

At the beginning of a development project, capital outlay goes for the purchase of property and construction. The greater the difference between that original outlay and the buildings subsequent recapitalization value (whether construction is finished or not), the higher the profit for the developer. The desire to maximize profit then determines two factors. First, the site desirable for the project will be a low income neighborhood real estate values will be lower there. And second, the developer will want to maximize the number of high income units (rental apartments or condos), thus maximizing the property’s income potential. An ancillary effect will be to foster construction of other high income buildings nearby, as a further increase in its real estate value (gentrification). Low original costs, high income value, and high resale value all contribute to maximization of profit. 

Thus, corporate development puts enormous pressure on cities to permit the building of high income multi-unit residences in low income neighborhoods. The fact that low income neighborhoods are generally found around major transit corridors, such as San Pablo Ave., has to do with changes in urban economies since World War II. Those who can afford to live in less industrial areas will do so, and low income and working people end up in the more industrial areas. It is thus that a variety of urban neighborhood cultures have developed. 

What the development planned by corporate developers (and Plan Bay Area) will do is change the class character of these major transit corridor neighborhoods, replacing industrial and commercial establishments, and bringing in higher income people. One immediate effect will be a rise in commercial rents. Higher rents will drive small stores that cater to a working class clientele out of business, and stores that cater to a wealthier clientele will take their place. The commercial and cultural infrastructure that low income and working class people depend on will be eroded, life will become more difficult and expensive, and residents will face the need to move elsewhere. In effect, neighborhoods will be destroyed (slowly, perhaps, but inexorably). 

Thus, corporate development in its own interest will change neighborhood demographics to satisfy itself. Money will be made by those who have money to invest, diversity will be lost, and entire urban cultures decimated. A recent example was the destruction of the West Oakland neighborhood as a major center of African American culture with the construction of BART along 7^th Street. 

Community interests and their desires

The community’s interests are for stability, growth with balanced diversity (maintaining a variety of classes, generations, and cultures), and an ability to represent and satisfy their political interests for themselves. 

• Stability means that the social situation and the commercial infrastructure for low income and working class life of the neighborhood remains intact, though not static. This means that the commercial establishments that low income people frequent, such as grocery stores, hardware stores, cafes, restaurants, bars, novelty stores, and the like, can stay in business. Though clothing or furniture, etc. may be cheaper in malls, for daily life’s needs, low income people need closer access.
• Growth means that affordable housing and employment are provided to accommodate increases in the population of young people, low income people, and the elderly. Without employment, neighborhoods face impoverishment. Without affordable housing for these groups, new employment will locate elsewhere. As people then relocate (generally under duress), community dissolves.
• Representation means that the interests of neighborhoods are defended and advanced in city council. In the absence of a council that represents the real interests of the neighborhoods, their interests lie in organizing assemblies for themselves that can discuss and defend the community’s interests, and act in the city to advance those interests.

Right now, none of these real neighborhood interests (preservation of neighborhood infrastructure, affordable housing, growing employment, and representation) are being met. Stability is threatened by development. Growth of an upper class demographic imposes a change in demographic that will force people out of the neighborhood. And current representation trades away attention to real neighborhood needs for potential city income from upper class buildings. The interests of developers and neighborhoods are thus in real conflict. 

The problem with representationism

Part of the problem with representationism is that human constituencies remain abstract for city council members, as opposed to corporate developers who represent themselves with concrete proposals and concrete money. When developers and the city get too close, you get things like balcony collapses. 

For a representative, constituencies remain abstract because each electoral district contains many different groups and interests, with different needs. Because one person can’t advance all at once, the diverse constituency simply becomes an idea. Because the constituencies represented are abstract, the city council becomes an autonomous political body making its own decisions. The effect of this is that when there are real issues, constituents have to come to the council to inform them of their real needs and of what they need the council to do. If the council was truly representative of the various interests in the city, people wouldn’t have to do that. 

In addition, because neighborhood people have not organized their own assemblies in which to discuss issues and policies, or how to resolve them, they have little of a tangible character for a representative to represent. If such assemblies existed, and people decided issues among themselves, a representative would have something concrete to represent. A representative who took this seriously would have organized such assemblies. But none have. 

This is the major political incommensurability between developers and neighborhoods. The neighborhood residents have to come to a meeting to make their needs known, while the developers come to officials and money with plans and money. The people ask for representation, and the developers ask for permits and licenses. The developers have the plans and come to the city for facilitation. The neighborhoods have needs and come to the city for plans. And the city adopts a policy that shuts them out of real planning. 

There is a new legal dimension to high income development

It would be unjust if private corporations simply disrupted community stability and changed its character for private interests. This would amount to a "disparate impact" on the part of development, something a recent Supreme Court decision has outlawed (as an extension of the Fair Housing Act of 1969). 

To guard against “disparate impacts” and the inequitable tranasformation of communities that would result, the incommensurability between corporate developer profit and neighborhood survival infrastructure would have to be resolved. That would mean bringing the two together at negotiating tables at all levels of planning. In other words, the best and most efficient way for the city to guard against violating the law now would mean making space for representatives of neighborhood assemblies at the planning tables, at all levels. 

Neighborhood participation would be able to establish how development could be a positive addition to the community, while minimizing detrimental effects. Neighborhood negotiators could protect already existing affordable housing units from being demolished. They could protect those commercial establishments that are essential to their infrastructure. They could bring to the planning process how many affordable housing units the community needs in addition to what it has. And these negotiators would have this information to bring to the table because of the discussions that would have occurred in the neighborhood assemblies. In short, neighborhood negotiators participating in the planning of each development site can point out what will be lost in terms of commercial infrastructure, affordable housing, and representation, and propose modifications of the plan. In this way, neighborhood representatives can protect the city against negative effects from development project that would have “disparate impact.” 

On the other hand, without that, gentrification will take the form of invasion of the neighborhood, which would be both undemocratic and unjust. 

The issue of representation

The system of representation that we have today is false representation. The fact that a neighborhood has to bring large numbers of people from the community to council meetings in order make their case before the councilmembers signifies that they do not have a councilmember who can make their case for them. That is, they have no representation unless they represent themselves. Though a council member is elected to represent the people, the people still have to represent themselves on top of that. This is unjust. 

There are two forms of representationism. One is where there are elections first, and the elected delegates make political decisions (this is the one we’ve got). The other is where people make decisions and policies for themselves in local discussions and dialogues, and then elect delegates to represent those decisions. The first is abstract, and the second is real. 

In the first kind, a council member is elected in a popularity contest called a "campaign," in which the candidate attempts to make a case for “vote-for-me” on the basis of past record and ideas for future actions. The candidate is saying “vote-for-me because of what I think” rather than “I am running because of what you think.” The second is not a possibility until people in the neighborhoods start getting to gether to discuss what they think, need, face, and want. Then, the candidate can represent them. Without that, no candidate can. 

But if there are such discussions, then the obvious person to represent the assembly or the constituency would be someone from within the discussion process. S/he wouldn’t have to say “vote-for-me” because everyone would already know how s/he understands what the assembly has accomplished. 

Conclusion

Gentrification will produce the destruction of existing neighborhood stability through growth of an upper class demographic, a shift in class composition and votes, a loss of an affordable commercial infrastructure, and a probable loss of affordable housing. 

We already see this shift in character in the fact that Berkeley will soon be without a hospital. To think that is not connected directly to the growing gentrification of the city, the shift in population class characteristics, and the fact that the wealthy have greater mobility, is to refuse to see the forest for the trees. 

To the extent the council does not permit the neighborhoods to participate in site-by-site planning, it is putting itself at the service of the corporate developers. 

This shouldn’t mean that high income people be excluded from neighborhoods. It is the developers that have to be held in check if they are not to act to the detriment of what the lower income residents of the neighborhood need for their survival. 

In sum, the neighborhood interests that residents need to defend for themselves because they do not have representatives who will defend these interests are: 

• That commercial establishments the community depends on do not get demolished.
• That existing affordable housing does not get demolished.
• That the growth of habitable space and housing units occur in response to human needs and not a result of computer projections by distant planning agencies (like ABAG).
• That any addition to a community, in order to be an addition and not an invasion, must take account of and enhance the stability of the neighborhood with respect to commercial character, social services, rent levels, real estate values, and traffic and parking patterns.