Oakland City Center

Abstract

This article examines the Oakland Redevelopment Agency's efforts (from the late 1950s through early 1980s) to revitalize the downtown core - the City Center project that leveled more than a score of older blocks and buildings, constructed a hotel and close to a dozen office buildings, yet failed to realize a regional shopping mall. City Center was premised on the idea that urban renewal, combined with Oakland's emerging centrality within the Bay Area's freeway and mass transit networks, would enable downtown to compete successfully with both San Francisco and the burgeoning suburbs. Yet unlike contemporaneous mega-projects that seemingly established Oakland as a key regional commercial attractor (e.g., the new container port and major-league sports complex), head-on competition with San Francisco (and the suburbs) for office, retail and hotel development proved a more difficult endeavor.