Produced by the
Preservation Institute

Overview

My Focus

The Key Change

Shattuck/Univ Corner

Berkeley Way/Shattuck

Berkeley Way Sidewalk

BART Plaza

Replacing the State Health Dept Building

For me, there is a strong symbolic resonance to replacing a modernist highrise with a fine-grained urban fabric of walkable streets. It is a rejection of modernist urbanism that reminds me of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, shown above. But it is even better, because the modernist urbanism is being replaced by an urban fabric created in a piecemeal way, like traditional urban fabrics.

Improve Walnut St.

One change that I have suggested in addition to the proposals already in the SOSIP is to make improvements in the block of Walnut St. between Berkeley Way and University Ave.

After the Walnut St. connector is added on the block between Hearst and Berkeley Way, there will be many people from the Helios Center and the proposed public health campus walking on that new pedestrian street. We want the block of Walnut St. immediately to its south to be attractive enough that those people will walk to University Ave. for lunch or shopping.

The greatest improvement to this block of Walnut would be a new building replacing the existing parking lot at the northeast corner of University Ave. If recent development trends in downtown continue, that new building probably will come soon.

Meanwhile, the SOSIP can add some simple improvements to that block, which is shown below.

As you can see in the picture, there are already planting strips next to the sidewalk. The planting strip on the right has been graveled over, half of the planting street on the left has been covered with concrete, and its other half has grass and an unhealthy tree.

Obviously, there should be rows of trees planted on both sides of the street. Because we can expect heavy pedestrian use here, the planting strip should probably be replaced by tree wells, like those on Shattuck Ave., to accommodate these trees.

In addition, it is possible to add sidewalk bulbouts on the southeast and southwest corners (the two corners shown in the picture) without creating any drainage problems.

In combination with my proposal to widen the sidewalk of Berkeley Way, these minor improvements would create a tolerable pedestrian connection between University Ave. and the Helios Center and public health campus.

The connection would be improved further when a new building is developed to replace the parking lot now on the northeast corner of Walnut and University Ave.

Tree planting on this block of Walnut St. is already included in the SOSIP. Sidewalk bulbouts are the added suggestion on this page.