Armatures in Areas from Redwood City to Palo Alto
The final project of our studio is to identify armatures in OLU 23–25 areas which are from Redwood City to Palo Alto. It contains silicon valley with many technical giant companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. After research, we found that although these technical companies bring a lot of work opportunities and money, they also increase the degree of gentrification.
In Wikipedia, gentrification is identified as this — “Gentrification is any facet of urban renewal that inevitably leads to displacement of the occupying demographic.” The reasons for gentrification are newly developed housing space, suburbanization, rising bourgeoisie, demands for some certain lifestyles such as centrality, convenience and so on. The fast development in these areas stimulates gentrification in the past several decades. Many native people have to move out of the place they used to live because they can not afford expensive living costs that suddenly changed with suburbanization. It is hard to say whether the process is right or wrong as it might be an inevitable process of urbanization. Because it will upgrade infrastructure and services while reducing the diversity in communities in the meantime. However, to deal with these problems, to benefit both new residents and native residents, as landscape designers, we need to consider the problems seriously. After talking with professors, I found that social justice, creating more job opportunities more houses will alleviate the conflicts. So in future design, I will try to introduce strategies about these.
Other armatures we consider is transportation which mainly includes highway, railway and drives way. We noticed that highway 101 has separated the urban areas — one side is housing space with low density, while another side has crowded communities, commercial areas and companies.
Also, sea-level rise, urban green patches, etc. are also risks that the areas are facing. So, our proposals need to stress those points.
