Rivers of Concrete and Asphalt

An abundance of discarded objects dot the surface of the Albany Bulb.  Buried in the ground and protruding from its surface, they build upon each other to create a unique and often treacherous landscape. Concrete is an essential component of the Bulb’s body of dumped construction materials. The Bulb-goer will find concrete inescapable—from immense mounds to small pebbles to dismantled walls and pillars. The origin of concrete discards are difficult to pinpoint, leaving much up to imagination.

As with many of the materials we are exploring in the Monument to Extraction project, production of concrete begins at the mine. Materials such as limestone and silica are pulled from the earth and fired at high temperatures to produce the grey, powdery substance called cement. Cement is then blended with sand, gravel, and water, to create concrete. The ratios of this mixture define its durability, strength, and workability.¹

Concrete is an essential component of the infrastructure that we rely on every day—facilitating travel, mobility, and urban expansion. However, with this increased opportunity for transportation and growth comes escalating waste and environmental degradation. These consequences are mirrored in the physical and historical layers of the Albany Bulb and the greater Bay Area. Concrete is key in the creation of highways, freeways, sidewalks, roads, bike paths, and public transit lines. If you have traveled to the Bulb, concrete facilitated your journey. You may have taken the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) or maybe you drove on the Eastshore Freeway, a segment of the Interstate 80 and 580. 

Freeways and Highways

For centuries, The Bay Area’s waterways carried much of its goods. Starting in the mid-19th century, train lines carried extracted materials from surrounding mountainous regions to industrial centers in the East Bay and San Francisco. Eventually, these lines transported passengers as well.²

During the heyday of highway-building after World War II, houses got torn down to make way for roadways. The debris ended up in places like the Albany landfill. The Eastshore Highway was completed in 1937 as a New Deal project and was built to alleviate traffic congestion on San Pablo Avenue and connect to the freshly built Bay Bridge and Oakland.³ The opening of the Eastshore Highway brought large numbers of people near Albany’s shoreline for the first time. At the time, the East Bay’s wetlands were still being used as an active dumping ground for garbage, sewage, and industrial waste. Complaints grew surrounding the foul smell of the shoreline. Imagine traveling along the highway, to work or home, overwhelmed by the wafting scent of the landfills along the bay shore.⁴ Ironically, the development and construction of new infrastructure, which impacted the wetlands and other natural surroundings in the area, increased residents’ environmental awareness concerning the preservation of the East Bay’s shoreline. 

The original Eastshore Highway was re-engineered between 1954 and 1960 into the segments of freeway Interstates 80 and 580 that we know of today, stretching from the MacArthur Maze interchange, just east of the Bay Bridge, to the Carquinez Bridge.⁵ 

While Bay Area suburbanites had already been commuting via rail and ferry from enclaves such as Alameda and San Rafael, cars and highways transformed the region into an “autocentric urban world ⁶,” further enabling suburban expansion. This expansion exacerbated racial segregation, as many new neighborhoods were not open to minorities. The impacts of past and current policies can be seen in segregated housing patterns that persist today.

The Key System

Even before cars and highways, the East Bay’s Key System encouraged the Bay Area’s transformation into a sprawling but unified region.⁷ Long before BART, this privately-owned electric streetcar system carried passengers throughout the East Bay. Officially named the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Consolidated Railway, the Key System obtained its nickname after the route’s shape, resembling an old-fashioned key. Its cars ran way out into the Bay on long piers and people completed the trip to San Francisco by ferry. 

After the Bay Bridge was built in 1936, Key trains ran on its lower deck. While the Key System street cars shut down in 1948 and the trains to San Francisco ended in 1958, today many of the East Bay’s public transit routes follow that of the Key System.⁸ 

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)

BART was conceived during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when the postwar population of the Bay Area was booming. Public transit was promoted as a way to relieve the automobile congestion clogging bridges across the Bay to connect outlying residential areas to San Francisco.⁹ 

The concept for the BART system was born and evolved from discussions between civic and business leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1949, the California State Legislature enacted legislation that authorized the creation of a regional district with the purpose of providing rapid transit facilities. And in 1951, the State Legislature created the San Francisco BART Commission with members from each of the nine Bay Area counties. Engineering plans for the system were developed between 1957 and 1962.¹⁰

BART was funded by a bond measure, but support varied across cities. Opposition to the rapid transit system was strong in the city of Albany. It consisted of an intensive campaign waged by city officials and civic leaders led against the proposed route. In fact, in Albany, only 30.5% of constituents voted “yes,” deploring the specific route that was planned. It is important to note that these votes excluded those living in University Village. In addition to Albany, southwest Oakland which was generally more conservative than the rest of the city, voted in opposition.¹¹

The city of Albany provides but one example of necessary accommodations made with local communities in regards to BART routing. Due to staunch opposition to the location and alignment of the proposed Albany station, the nearest station to Albany is in neighboring El Cerrito. Based on Homburger’s assessment, not only did Albany have a small population of 18,000 during this time, but they had little commercial revenue aside from the race track and a small tax base. Concerned by the alignment of the suggested station and its parking, the city proposed a BART route along the shores of the Bay.¹² However, this was protested by the city of Berkeley, which felt that Albany’s proposal would contribute to Berkeley’s loss in taxable real estate. Placing a station in El Cerrito limited the land acquired in Albany but ultimately worked to restrict the usefulness of the BART system overall. 

Today, the closest BART trains to Albany stop in Berkeley and El Cerrito. As with highway construction, more houses needed to be torn down and dumped in landfills to build the above-ground portions of BART in the East Bay. It is possible that remnants of those homes ended up at the Albany Bulb. 

Expansion and Extraction 

Rivers of concrete in the form of highways have worked to simultaneously connect and divide residents and regions. Highways and rail lines allowed for newfound opportunities in the development of the Bay Area. But they also helped the region’s White elite to separate themselves from central urban areas, and to limit the accumulation of wealth in communities of color through systems of redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and exclusionary zoning. 

As an energy-intensive material extracted from the earth, concrete is essential to our everyday lives at the same time that has caused irreversible damage to our natural environments. We teeter on the edge of an abyss.  Will we continue the systems and practices that foster both inequality and degradation?

The next time you come upon remnants of concrete at the Albany Bulb, take a minute to wonder where it might have come from.  Reflect on how this material has everything to do with how we get around and how our communities have been built. Will concrete be part of a more equitable future for housing and transportation in the Bay Area?

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Header image: the MacArthur Maze, 1970s. Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Footnotes:

¹Leetham, D. (2017, August 1). Are You Mining Minerals for Cement, or for Concrete? Advancing Mining. https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/are-you-mining-minerals-for-cement-or-for-concrete/

²Brashares, J., & O’Keefe Fos, K. (n.d.). Transportation in California History. Calisphere. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/84/transportation-california-history/

 ³Treadway, C. (2019). Eastshore Highway The view on the shoreline roadway could be breathtaking—But so could the odor. The Forge, 35(1), 6.

 ⁴Treadway, C. (2019). Eastshore Highway The view on the shoreline roadway could be breathtaking—But so could the odor. The Forge, 35(1), 6.

 ⁵Adams, K. (Ed.). (1954). California Highways and Public Works. 33(7–8).

⁶Walker, R., & Schafran, A. (2015). The Strange Case of the Bay Area. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(1), 10–29, p.16. https://doi.org/10.1068/a46277

⁷Walker, R., & Schafran, A. (2015). The Strange Case of the Bay Area. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(1), 10–29, p.16. https://doi.org/10.1068/a46277

⁸Key System Transit Railroad History Info—Western Railway Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://www.wrm.org/about/railroad-history/key-system

⁹Grefe, R., & Smart, R. (1975). A History of the Key Decisions in the Development of Bay Area Rapid Transit.

 ¹⁰Grefe, R., & Smart, R. (1975). A History of the Key Decisions in the Development of Bay Area Rapid Transit.

¹¹Wolfgang S. Homburger, “An Analysis of the Vote on Rapid Transit Bonds in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering, University of California, June, 1963.

¹²Wolfgang S. Homburger, “An Analysis of the Vote on Rapid Transit Bonds in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering, University of California, June, 1963.

For further reading:

A History of BART: The Concept is Born | bart.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2021, from https://www.bart.gov/about/history

Adams, K. (Ed.). (1954). California Highways and Public Works. 33(7–8).

Brashares, J., & O’Keefe Fos, K. (n.d.). Transportation in California History. Calisphere. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/84/transportation-california-history/

Grefe, R., & Smart, R. (1975). A History of the Key Decisions in the Development of Bay Area Rapid Transit (p. 212).

Key System Transit Railroad History Info—Western Railway Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://www.wrm.org/about/railroad-history/key-system

Leetham, D. (2017, August 1). Are You Mining Minerals for Cement, or for Concrete? Advancing Mining. https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/are-you-mining-minerals-for-cement-or-for-concrete/

Treadway, C. (2019). Eastshore Highway The view on the shoreline roadway could be breathtaking—But so could the odor. The Forge, 35(1), 6.

Walker, R., & Schafran, A. (2015). The Strange Case of the Bay Area. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(1), 10–29. https://doi.org/10.1068/a46277

Room for interpretation, and the veil of mystery that seems to characterize the Bulb, has provided space for a discourse surrounding concrete’s significance; considering both our theme of ‘extraction’ and histories of transportation, expansion, and development across the Bay Area.

Monument to Transportation

The monument I have constructed works to suggest the methods of urban mobility that have shaped development, access to housing and transportation, and environmental preservation (or lack thereof) in the Bay Area. These delicate structures blend in with the natural landscape, similar to how infrastructure and its impacts often become invisibilized in our everyday lives. Their fragility provides movement—their forms are mobile. In part, this fragile nature was inspired by Andy Goldsworthy’s idea of developing work to it’s “edge of collapse;” emphasizing not only how extraction places our environment at this edge, but the intimate link between mobility and extraction. Infrastructure and the accessibility it provides creates opportunity but also waste and increased extraction.

Under the tree with the mobiles, I made this mosaic representing BART, highways, and trains. When you are at the Bulb, if you scan the mosaic with the Artivive app on your phone, a short animation will play. 

You can see animation here by clicking on the image of the mosaic.