People’s Park and Open Space
The need for housing in the Bay Area is undeniable. Over forty years of reduced budgets for public services, including public housing, combined with the influx of capital investment to build market rate housing, has created a massive crisis for those on the middle and lower end of the income spectrum. The income gap is as extreme now as it was a hundred years ago in the Gilded Age. We see the evidence of this daily. UC Berkeley, the flagship campus of the world’s greatest public university, has homeless students. There is no denying that Berkeley needs housing, particularly affordable housing.
However, the proposal to develop People’s Park ignores not only its history and listing on the National Register of Historic Places, but the need for open space in the South Campus area.
Going way back historically, we can recall the broader context of the history of urban public space starting with the Greek agora and the Roman forum that are the antecedents to U.S. parks, commons, marketplaces and squares.
Lack of park acreage in Berkeley was noted in 1915 in Walter Hegemann’s city plan report. He noted the backwardness of Berkeley despite “the influence of Frederick Law Olmsted, the elder, the great American genius of park-culture.” (Olmsted was the famous designer of New York’s Central Park.)
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