San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Public spaces reveal new uses as we distance from each other
Residential towers opened last year in San Francisco and Oakland. Silicon Valley sprouted yet more tech compounds wrapped in glass that glistens with an icy sheen.
But the most profound change to the Bay Area’s urban landscape in 2020 had nothing to do with buildings, no matter how tall or expansive they might be. It involves something more fundamental — our realization of the importance of public space in all its forms, as well as heightened expectations of what such spaces should provide.
The restrictions on personal movement prompted by the coronavirus showed the value of any accessible land that offers a counterpoint to the confines of daily life, from neighborhood streets to
regional parks. Yet the very nature of “public” space confronted another defining issue — the need for true equity throughout our culture, so that such spaces are both accessible and welcoming to all segments of society.
“There are a lot of opportunities, but also challenges, to come out of 2020,” said Annie Burke, executive director of Together Bay Area, a consortium of public agencies and nonprofits that until last year was known as the Bay Area Open Space Council. “With COVID, the awareness of public space has really gone up ... when sports are shut down, when movie screens are dark and museums are closed, going to a park or taking a walk are among the few things you can do.”
The essential role of public space in a metropolitan region showed itself in ways that were easy to measure, such as usage.
In a July survey conducted by the East Bay Regional Parks District, more than 20% of the respondents said they visit one of the district’s 73 parks “weekly,” four times the amount recorded in 2019. The most recent monthly count of visitors in the Presidio of San Francisco took place in September: The number of pedestrians within the unusual national park was 9% above the levels of the prior September, even though national and international visitors to the scenic enclave were all but nonexistent.
But that primal urge to be among people — or at least have them within socially distant sight — manifested itself in lessobvious settings as well. Parking spaces became ad hoc dining rooms for beleaguered restaurants. On many roadways, pedestrians and bicyclists were given precedence over cars.
Public land also served other needs unique to 2020. As many as 1,800 bags of food were distributed on a weekly basis in three San Francisco parks, while 3,500 people received coronavirus tests in numerous locations including Japantown’s Peace Plaza. Part of Civic Center Plaza became an early voting center with 200 voting booths.
“We’ve used this as a time of experimentation,” said Phil Ginsburg, general manager of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department. “Parks are not luxuries or sweet amenities — they’re essential infrastructure.”
This reality shaped lockdown orders last spring. While buildings where people could gather were shuttered, public health directives encouraged us “to engage in outdoor recreation activity,” such as walking, hiking and bicycling. Gyms and pools were closed. Side-evangelically,” walks and trails remained open. Oakland soon began closing selected multiblock segments of many streets to all nonneighborhood traffic so that strollers and bicyclists could move safely. But even as what Oakland calls “slow streets” caught on nationally, there was resistance at home. While championing bicycles instead of cars might resonate in upscale neighborhoods like Rockridge, where residents working from home might want to stretch their legs at the end of the day, activists in largely Black neighborhoods bridled at what they saw as topdown assumptions of how people should live. Service workers in hospitals and supermarkets complained of timeconsuming commute detours amid so many other demands.
“It was a kneejerk response to the pandemic — decisions were being made almost by city officials who saw restrictions on cars as an absolute good, suggested June Grant. The Oakland architect has pushed for decentralized control of planning and other government initiatives. “There needs to be more attention to how local people use local places.”
Oakland hasn’t added to the 21mile network of “slow streets” since July. It also began to emphasize “essential places,” a more focused set of closures aimed at intersections in commercial areas or near hospitals, where neighborhood residents said they felt endangered when running errands on foot.
“It’s too easy to listen to voices that reflect your own experiences,” admitted Ryan Russo, director of Oakland’s Department of Transportation. “We need to stay in conversation with the community.”
That underlying tension — between the desire to expand the public realm and concerns about the impacts — has played out again and again through the months.
Dining parklets, where restaurants were allowed to set up tables and chairs outside while their dining rooms are closed, have been largely embraced. But there were complaints from drivers about fewer parking spaces and retailers concerned those drivers would shop elsewhere.
As for parks, your quiet stroll might be interrupted by joggers not bothering with masks, or groups of friends with little interest in keeping a safe social distance. When playgrounds or basketball courts are ruled offlimits, not everyone goes along.
“This has been a nonstop communications challenge,” Ginsburg said. “We’re trying to encourage people to do the right thing, but sometimes they don’t accept the idea that they can’t play pickup soccer or meet 10 friends.”
In a year of such flux, the quintessential Bay Area public space of 2020 might be Liberation Park in Oakland, across from Eastmont Town Center.
The acreplus site was a tire dealership when the mall opened in 1970, but that business closed long ago. The city eventually purchased it and for more than a decade the land sat vacant, tall weeds behind a tall fence.
That situation changed in March, when officials passed management to the East Oakland Black Cultural Zone Collaborative. Supporters spent two months clearing the debris, and then the gate was opened to welcome everything from a COVID19 test site to drivein movies on Friday nights. Amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — on a public street in broad daylight — the space was used to hold a peaceful rally followed by a march.
Liberation Park was also a semiweekly home to Acoma Public Market (“Acoma” is a West African term for “heart”). The last market was Dec. 6, the Sunday before a renewed shelterinplace order took effect. In addition to holiday gifts and crafts, there was a large rectangle of artificial turf where children played. Produce vendors sold large bundles of collard greens alongside winter squash and other seasonal harvests. “We had been in discussions with the city beforehand, though we didn’t know how valuable it would be” once the pandemic hit, said Carolyn Jones, one of the leaders of the collaborative, which was founded in 2014. “I look on it as a symbol of community rebirth, where people can have a place.”
Liberation Park isn’t a traditional “park,” obviously. But 2020 hasn’t been a traditional year. Instead, it has shown how urgently we need alternatives to the old way of doing things — and that, in a fundamental way, the best definition of public space is a space where people can find a bit of pleasurable respite amid everything else going on.