UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Making and Unmaking of Southeast San Francisco Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kv7108z Author Brahinsky, Rachel Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Making and Unmaking of Southeast San Francisco By Rachel Brahinsky A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Richard Walker, Chair Professor Paul Groth Professor Charles Henry Professor Raka Ray Fall 2012 The Making and Unmaking of Southeast San Francisco Copyright 2012 By Rachel Brahinsky Abstract The Making and Unmaking of Southeast San Francisco by Rachel Brahinsky Doctor of Philosophy in Geography University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Walker, Chair This project historicizes the recent convergence of private and public development interests in Southeast San Francisco, a place that was once dismissed as too risky for investment. Emphasizing the importance of race and gender in this history, I ask how an unexpected story of urban change shifts our sense of possibility for San Francisco and, more broadly, for the future of the American city. Historically, the Southeast was the place where San Francisco cloistered industries and people that were unwelcome by the mainstream. After years of industrial concentration, the area became home to a naval shipyard that played a central role in World War II, and that drew in thousands of African American families to live and work. The residential character of today’s Southeast was further shaped by waves of urban renewal in the 1950s and 60s and by the activism of African American women in the 1970s. Development plans that emerged in the late 1990s revealed that the poor, industrially polluted, and violence-ridden Southeast would be pivotal in formulating San Francisco’s 21st Century growth patterns. Today, the city is moving forward with a massive redevelopment plan for the Southeast under a partnership between the Redevelopment Agency and the Lennar Corporation, one of America’s largest private homebuilders and a key player in the mortgage crisis. Lennar’s Southeast is a largely poor yet racially diverse place, with a recent influx of Chinese- American and Latino families. Nested amid San Francisco’s extreme real estate-driven wealth, the Southeast has a long history of alliances defined by political patronage. In sum, through three case studies that reveal interlinked histories, this dissertation unpacks the ways that the politics of urban development and racial exclusion shape places, even in apparently progressive regions like the San Francisco Bay Area. This work extends and contributes to conversations about the role of government in urban growth, the co- production of urban space and racial hierarchies, and the ways that race-class politics are shifting in the newly multi-ethnic context of the American city. 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………......iv Chapter 1: Southeast San Francisco and the Changing American City.……....... 1 Why Southeast San Francisco?............................................................................... 4 Map of San Francisco, emphasizing the Southeast.……………………………… 5 The Ghosts of History..............................................................................................7 Left Coast City?...................................................................................................... .8 San Francisco in Context.........................................................................................11 Mayors, “Blight,” and Affordable Housing............................................................ 13 The Politics of Development...................................................................................16 Structure of the Dissertation…………....................................................................18 Arguments: History, Race, Land, and Stories......................................................... 20 Are You Listening?................................................................................................. 21 Chapter 2: Race, Space, and Making the City......................................................... 23 Part I: Making Meaning.......................................................................................... 25 “Race” and the Re-Making of Cities.......................................................................25 Racialization........................................................................................................... 26 Relationality and Triangulation...............................................................................28 The Spaces of Race-Class....................................................................................... 30 Fitting Race and Space Together............................................................................ 33 Part II: Making History.......................................................................................... 36 A Century of Racial Binaries.................................................................................. 36 Waves of People, Waves of (Re)development........................................................40 Privatized Partnerships............................................................................................ 44 Conclusion: Asking Questions of Space.................................................................46 i Chapter 3: Southeast San Francisco: A Place Apart?............................................. 50 Re-telling the Story................................................................................................. 50 Continuity on the Coast…………………………...................................................51 Historiography of an Untold History…………………………………………….. 55 Isolation and the Value of Land............................................................................. 57 Naming....................................................................................................................60 The Birth of an Outlier............................................................................................60 Chinese Presence.................................................................................................... 63 Shipbuilding and a Global Destiny......................................................................... 65 A Place With No Voice........................................................................................... 68 Imperial Footprints: Racial Shifts, Class Continuity and Displacement………….70 Towards “The Warmth of Other Suns”...................................................................73 Making Segregation.................................................................................................74 Moving Off the Hill.................................................................................................77 Freeway Fights and Other Sporting Events.............................................................80 Conclusion: Race in Place.......................................................................................81 Chapter 4: The Fillmore Ghost: San Francisco in the Age of Urban Renewal….83 The Black Fillmore..................................................................................................85 History and Memory................................................................................................87 Building the Fillmore.............................................................................................. 89 Politics and Networks..............................................................................................92 Negotiating Participation........................................................................................ 94 “Hush Puppies”....................................................................................................... 96 The Haunting Legacy of the Fillmore..................................................................... 101 Chapter 5: Bayview’s “Big Five” and the Gendered Defense of Racial Politics... 104 Fitting In To Bayview............................................................................................. 106 Myth, Memory, and the DC Delegation..................................................................110 Chasing after the Big Five.......................................................................................112 Gendered Power...................................................................................................... 114 ii Why Women?......................................................................................................... 115 Aftermath, and the Meaning of Marginality........................................................... 119 Lennar and the Structures of Political Abandonment............................................. 121 Chapter 6: Ghosts in the Machine............................................................................. 123 “The Last of the Mohicans”.................................................................................... 125 Why “flight”?.......................................................................................................... 126 Toxic Urbanism: Known Knowns and Unknown Unknowns…………………….128 The Shipyard: The