Street Trees on San Pablo Avenue: Berkeley is Leafy Green, Emeryville is Sun Blasted and Bleak

Emeryville's San Pablo Avenue Failure: 

Optimizing For Cars Means Fewer Trees 

Means Diminished Public Space 

Means Less Pedestrians 

Means Less Citizen Engagement

Means Less Local Economic Activity 

Means Civic Failure

Infrastructure of the 1995 San Pablo Avenue Beautification Project:
Street lights, bricks & ample left hand turn lanes.
Trees are allowed but not encouraged.

News Analysis

Twenty eight years ago, the City of Emeryville embarked on a visionary $4.1 million San Pablo Avenue Beautification Project, to create a pleasant pedestrian-centered boulevard out of a grimy and drab busy thoroughfare. Up the street in Berkeley, there was no big initiative, though it has always been a tree-lined road with a landscaped median; standard Berkeley stuff.  Here in Emeryville, all of San Pablo was reconfigured with the 1995 beautification project; a new raised median was added and many trees were planted.  Emeryville seemed to catch up with Berkeley, and then some; the project also included brick pavers on the sidewalks and pedestrian oriented street lamps.

Twenty eight years later, the trees (what’s left of them) have matured. Taking stock of our $1.4M infrastructure project--how have we done? We've failed– because, baked into the revitalization project was a guiding philosophy that beautification and pedestrian improvements shouldn't in any way impede traffic or commerce. The median is mostly the province of motor vehicles---long left turn pockets at each cross street.  Some take up the entire block, in both directions, leaving no trees at all. Other left turn pockets stretch half a block, leaving a two foot wide median, enough for a shrub or two, but not trees. 

The city also specifically chose species that remain small, so as not to hide billboards and signs on businesses, at the request of short-sighted local and national merchants. 

In Berkeley, sylvan, mature trees arch over San Pablo, forming a canopy in places. It's helped Berkeley attract locally serving retail shops to a place pedestrians linger, as if it were a destination in and of itself, not a corridor to a more pleasant place elsewhere---completing a virtuous cycle of good urban design.  Emeryville can’t seem to attract any locally serving retail on San Pablo Avenue without city subsidies, such as Arizmendi’s Bakery.  Here, we must provide financial assistance or risk our commercial spaces falling vacant or being gobbled up by fast food and national chain stores 

Compounding the lack of median trees in Emeryville, most of the trees planted in 1995 have since been replaced by saplings. Whenever developers remodel or replace a building, out come the chainsaws. City Hall allows this as despite our Urban Tree Ordinance, street trees aren't valued here.

So there you have it, clear to see. Travel the length of San Pablo Avenue from University Avenue in Berkeley to 39th Street in Emeryville.  But be sure to have your sunglasses handy when you reach Emeryville.  Here the street is sun blasted and hot in the summer while in Berkeley it's cool and shaded.  The divergent values can be easily seen with one transit.  One city prioritizes public space for pedestrians, the other for a swift vehicular pass through.

Street Optimized For Cars
Typical road diet in Emeryville: long left hand turn lanes, no room for trees.

Street Optimized For Pedestrians
Typical street scene on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley.  Large trees on both sides reach over to
large trees in the median to make tree tunnels.  Not possible with long left hand turn lanes.

San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley: Dappled Sunlight, Pedestrian Friendly
It's much cooler than Emeryville and much more inviting for small locally serving retail shops.

'Safe Routes to School'? Maybe, But Not After the 'Flashing Beacon' Lightbulbs Burn Out

Q: How Many Public Works Employees Does it Take to Screw In a Light Bulb?

A: More Than 13

Opinion
Emeryville City Hall tells us they care about children.  But how much do they really care?  They care enough to apply for a $500,000 grant to install crosswalk flashing warning lights as part of a "Safe Routes to School" federal program.  Unfortunately, they don't care enough to change the lightbulbs when they burn out.  Changing lightbulbs is not a task the 13 employees at Emeryville's Public Works Department is adroit enough to handle.

Safe Routes to Schools?
43rd Street at San Pablo Avenue-
The existing in-pavement flashers are
being removed but the flashing sign
beacons will remain.
Safe....until the light bulbs
burn out.

After securing the grant money, the City is directing the work now starting on three intersections along San Pablo Avenue at 43rd, 45th and 47th Streets in anticipation of the eventual completion of the Center of 'Community' Life at 47th and San Pablo.  These are the crossings children will be using to get to school and button activated flashing beacon signs are the central part of the scope of work.

The problem is we've seen this story before and it doesn't end well...
Simple maintenance and follow through is not big at the Public Works Department.  Consider the crosswalk at 43rd Street and San Pablo.  Ten years ago, anguished parents appealed to the City to help children safely cross that busy street near Anna Yates Elementary School.  The City responded with a $20,000 program to install button activated flashing beacons on signs and in asphalt pavement embedded lights at that intersection; a vast improvement.
(On a side note, now, only the flashing beacon signs will remain at the 43rd Street crossing; the pavement embedded beacons are being removed as part of the new Safe Routes to Schools program, leaving the claims of improved safety in question, at least for that intersection.)
The last flashing beacon light bulb finally burned out a couple of years ago at the San Pablo Avenue/43rd Street crosswalk leaving parents and citizens attempting the traverse at the mercy of busy California State Route 123 (aka San Pablo Avenue) drivers.  Complaints to the Public Works Department over the years about burned out lightbulbs have fallen on deaf ears, all the hyperbolic talk of child welfare and safe routes to schools notwithstanding.

We're not sure why the Emery Unified School District was so insistent to place our new elementary school directly on the busiest street in Emeryville; San Pablo Avenue with its 1600 vehicles per hour speeding through these intersections, but now we're stuck with it.  Presumably, with the new flashing beacons provided by the federal government, children will be able to safely cross (so says the School District)....safe until the light bulbs start burning out.
Unfortunately again, the safety of our children is placed in the hands of the can't-be-bothered-to-change-lightbulbs Public Works Department and its Director Maurice Kaufman.  Too bad we can't get the feds to commit to changing the bulbs...then maybe we really would have safe routes to schools.  All these new lightbulbs being installed is going to be too much for Maurice Kaufman to handle.

How many Public Works employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?  We wish it were merely a bad joke.  The actual truthful answer to that question; more than 13, isn't funny.

Vexing for the likes of Emeryville
Now what do we do?

San Pablo Avenue to Get Check Cashing

San Pablo Avenue at 45th Street
Oh Boy!  Check Cashing!
San Pablo Avenue Rocks!
24% interest on the working poor and 
the destitute in your town.
Ten years of Emeryville public policy 
and city planning for San Pablo Avenue has net...
check cashing.

Emeryville's Vision For San Pablo Avenue: Civic Dysfunction

Berkeley Beats Emeryville

Opinion/News Analysis
Travel down San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville and look around.  It's not the kind of thing however, someone would want to do on foot; a car works much better here.  And that's not an accident - it's a result of a specific vision and suite of policy decisions authored by city council member Nora Davis and her council majority colleagues.  Fast food, baking parking lots, blank walls crowding the sidewalk, drive-in drive-out podium condominiums...it's the anti-pedestrian, feel bad street-scape made for high speed cars, it's San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville.

Council member Nora Davis is fond of telling citizens it used to be worse before her transformative 25 year reign changed it into...what?  It's been transformed alright but just not someplace where you'd want to linger.
San Pablo is a perfect street to put the Nora Davis city planning vision into stark perspective. The street traces it's trajectory through neighboring Berkeley as well as Emeryville and two different city planning philosophies are readily apparent as one crosses between the contrasting cities.

Twenty five years ago, San Pablo Avenue represented, from a pedestrian and neighbor perspective, failed urban planning in both Emeryville and Berkeley.  Both cities then began campaigns making the street friendlier, with government programs for pedestrian amenities and general beautification.  Raised medians were added with copious plantings and street trees were planted in both cities along with beautiful new street lighting.  But that's where the similarities stop.  After all the government spending on San Pablo, one town continues to be largely and arguably an urban wasteland while the other town has sparked a civic rebirth and the street has become an extremely vibrant community gathering place filled with street cafes, one-of-a-kind shops, an independent bookstore, art galleries, slow food restaurants and such.

Berkeley's Funky Vibe
The most amazing thing about Berkeley's transformation of San Pablo Avenue is how the street continues to maintain its funky vibe in the face of this transformation...it's not just yuppies and overpriced boutiques like Fourth Street.  Since the street has extremely varied retail opportunities offering shopping and a civic space conducive to sustain a neighborhood, middle class and working class people are well served and they continue to live and shop in the neighborhood.

Over the years there have been a few attempts to make San Pablo in Emeryville more pedestrian friendly, most notably former council member John Fricke's work to bring Arizmendi's Bakery to the Promenade development but mostly it's been the anti-pedestrian / anti-neighborhood vision of council member Davis that has been the dominant force.

Berkeley, famous for its hyper involved citizenry and disdain for suburban style malls and fast food restaurants has left its stamp on San Pablo.  Decisions, large and small, made by the Berkeley city council (with the threat of a citizen uprising at a moments notice) has wrought what we now see in that city on San Pablo Avenue. Tortuous as it is, the process has worked in Berkeley and the neighbors are the beneficiaries.

Emeryville's Deference To Developers
In Emeryville, Ms Davis and the rest of the council majority has long held that the best way to develop the city is to put the developers themselves in the drivers seat.  It's a sort of an anti-planning city planning philosophy. The idea is that rational market forces know best and market forces, left to their own devises will deliver a vibrant neighborhood filled with the kinds of development consumers want.
Not to put too much emphasis on the city council policy vision of developer deference, what some might call governmental neglect, it should be noted that Ms Davis has in fact directly intervened to impose a fast food centric program for San Pablo.  At least twice councilwoman Davis has actively worked on the behalf of specific fast food restaurants for the street.  In 2003, Ms Davis even started a citizen signature drive to assure that International House of Pancakes would get the premier Park Avenue corner spot reserved for the Promenade development.  Earlier, she intervened directly and led a council majority drive for a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

We can see, some 20 years after the street beautification work, the results of the two cities aggregate visions; one market based that sees citizens as consumers and the other neighborhood based that values community.


Three Ingredients
San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley presents pedestrians and neighbors a whole different psychology of public space than in Emeryville.  The street has a democratic feeling to it.  But what are the ingredients in Berkeley that create this vibrant civic space?  It's really pretty simple:

• Mature beautiful street trees
• Reasonably interesting historic architecture
• Lack of franchise chain retail and fast food

The architecture part is probably the least important ingredient.   While it's true Emeryville typically allows its historic buildings to be demolished for new development (in violation of the General Plan which calls for adaptive re-use), the historic architecture on San Pablo in Berkeley has been saved but that said it's not really very exciting.  It does however contribute to the funky vibe pedestrians find appealing.

The street trees make a larger contribution and Berkeley here too beats Emeryville.  While Emeryville has planted many trees along San Pablo, the species selected don't grow as large and spreading as Berkeley's and Emeryville has historically allowed developers to cut down the street trees and plant new saplings.  It seems we're forever watching juvenile trees struggle to become mature here.

But by far the biggest reason Berkeley has won this contest is the lack of franchise chain retail and fast food restaurants.  Though hard to quantify, there can be no mistake about the erosional nature against street vitality this kind of nation-wide ubiquitous development has had.  It's not hyperbolic to note that this kind of development kills pedestrians natural desire to want to linger in an otherwise grand public space.  And people lingering, not rushing is how community is created.

The paradigm of franchise chain retail and fast food is the result of a lazy city council at best and a council driven by pro-developer ideology at worst.  People here should expect the city council to put the public into public policy and work to value add to the commons as a way to build community as they have done in Berkeley.  The council keeps touting how they're going to build and sustain community on San Pablo by reliance on one project: the incipient Center of Community Life.  But to expect to have 20 years of this developer led policy directed from Nora Davis and her council majority colleagues be offset by one pie-in-the-sky project is a set up for failure.  The Emeryville city council needs to stop coddling developers on San Pablo Avenue and start doing what Berkeley has done; show some leadership in governing.

Emeryville

Emeryville

Berkeley

Emeryville

Berkeley

Berkeley