There are many people who live and/or work in this town who don’t have a lot. They eat at cheap places like Subway. It’s a teensy bit boorish that people who will spend $15 on a burger would need to comment on someone who eats a $5 (or less) sandwich.

As for Whole Foods, I have to feel truly sorry for anyone who needs to spend a lot of money to feel they are getting the “best.” Between Farmer and Trader Joes, I get quality organic produce and other products. When I want good meat, I go to Piedmont market. I go to Whole Foods for a slice of pizza and that’s it.

No one mentioned Alameda, which has managed to rebuild the shopping center next to the beach that has a lot of chain and specialty stores. Old Navy, Borders, TJ Max, Kohl’s to replace Mervyn’s, Bed Bath, Office Max, Safeway, Trader Joes, Radio Shack, Sees, Massage Envy, Petco, and several specialty shops. In fact, there are a lot of good places to shop and dine all over Alameda. It’s safer, parking is available, even along Park St.

I know that everyone thinks that buidling housing in downtown was a great idea but it has done nothing to bring retail to downtown (not there are any decent places left for major retail) and I still have to drive or BART to another city to shop.

Downtown Oakland should be a retail mecca considering it’s linked to the entire region by three BART stations. There’s no reason why Oakland can’t go vertical along the Broadway spine and develop first rate retail. The area is already upgrading very nicely. Believe it or not, people do come to Oakland from other regions, states, and countries, if we give them a reason to do so. As an example, the new Christ the Light Cathedral at the shores of Lake Merritt seems to be attracting tourists. I was there yesterday and there were many people speaking foreign languages and taking lots of pictures. At the same time, on a beautiful day by Lake Merritt, an Italian Gondola came by and spent a few minutes directly across the Cathedral to allow their passengers a good look at the magnificent edifice.

Oakland needs to think big and stop with the unwarranted inferiority complex..

Emeryville’s population is more like 10,000 with the new condos going up.

You’re right the the city used to be industrial and warehouses. How did the city get all the retail? Good question. I can only repeat the official city line: That it was a concerted effort by the city council to purge the city’s reputation in the early 1900′s of being a rotten pit of a town, and loads of redevelopment $.

I would be thrilled to be able to shop for socks or a nice shirt in the Dimond or Laurel.

Emeryville’s population is more like 10,000 now with the new condos going up. I’m just nitpicking.

Your’re right that Emeryville used to be alot of industrial and warehouses. How did the city get all the retail? Good question. I can only repeat the official city line: that it was a concerted effort by the city council to purge the then reputation that it had of being a stinky pit of a town, and a bunch of redevelopment $.

Being an Oakland resident I would be thrilled to be able to shop for socks or a nice shirt in the Dimond or Laurel.

Obviously different kinds of fuel extraction will peak at different times. Even the concept of peak may not be that important. What if we are producing more of an energy type, which is to say that we are before the peak, but the price of production of that kind of energy is skyrocketing? That might be worse then reaching the production peak. The point is that the cost of energy production of whatever type that you can imagine, is skyrocketing. And that has profound consequences for society, especially consumerism and war and other forms of madness, which mindlessly waste energy. You seem to imply that there is some silver bullet energy source waiting in the wings to replace oil, gas, and coal. What would that be? Is this a matter of faith?

I’m with you on technology. I ditched cars in order to finance a solar roof which way oversupplies my power — you might be reading this using electrons that are coming from my roof. Enjoy my electrons! As for density, it’s time to agree to disagree. It might be a deep psychological difference between us that we can never transcend.

BTW, I was doing software engineering when the internet started becoming popular in the late eighties. Laptops with graphical interfaces were widely available in 95. However, business “culture” still required that engineers commute often long distances, and work alone in their office cubes. Maybe that will change, but back then managers were stuck in hierarchical social patterns that go back to the Roman empire. So I’m cynical about your telepresence idea too. Business is more interested in power than sanity, planetary survival, human happiness, etc. I hope that your experience is different.

Peak Oil does not equate to all energy sources peaking out. At every transition to a new source of energy has historically been accompanied by a run up in the price of the source being replaced. This is followed by a boom in exploiting producing and consuming the new source. The downside to this process, historically, has to do with the uneven process of the three sciences. Biology lags behind physics and chemistry, and always has. This the consequences of the byproducts of energy production were not predicted in the coal, coal gas, oil, and nuclear eras. The great change in the current moment is that humanity’s understanding of its own biology is finally making significant leaps.

So, we still want more computer power. We still want more transportation power. We still want more bandwidth. We still want more social conact. We still want more peace. But we now are better able to understand the ecological ramifications of pursuing our wants. To me that adds up to the starter pistol in a race for green energy, efficiency, technology, and yes, urban density.

Urban areas and people in general may be able to become less reliant on centralized industry, governance, and farming. But (pie in the sky warning)…
Density will keep increasing until information tech reaches a level where telepresence becomes on par with physical presence, in terms of physical experience. We’re a long way from there.

And why isn’t there more conversation on tweeking the suburbs since that is where many people want to be. Move more office space to the suburbs, promote dublexes, create super efficient transportation, etc. People could try to share more things to decrease the huge redundancy of suburban living (which might be an economic necessity the way things are going), etc.

affordable high density exciting cities will attract empty nesters, young professionals but you’ll probably need to provide the mass transit for the people who service those folks to get here from the burbs where they prefer to raise their families. pushing the state to encourage higher density suburbs would make a much bigger impact on sprawl and carbon footprints than any infill changes to inner cities.

and even if you did succeed in getting those people to move back here for whatever motivation, to get the carbon footprint efficiences we need, we’re talking Manhattan densities, not Brooklyn. Difference between 4 story infill vs 8 stories, ain’t gonna save the earth.

-len raphael (aka temescal nimby )

There are some noble but tiny efforts to create local foods: City Slicker Farms and People’s Grocery. I hope that people support these efforts in West Oakland. They seem very dedicated to local health and social justice.

Max, I agree with your urban greening. Richard Register has described and illustrated this. But you missed one obvious point. People take all of the road surface for granted, but if you eliminate the private car, wouldn’t that open up massive acearage for farming? There are already a few communities that have done this. One is near Davis, and it is a lot more people friendly than the standard asphalt-uber-alles setup. No doubt it is better for wildlife, watershed health, noise pollution, child safety and mental health, etc, etc, etc. And picking fruit from in front of your house makes a lot more sense than flying it in from Peru. Especially when there are plenty of hungry people in Peru.