Planning Studio:
Gilman Street and San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, California
In Spring 2006, CCI Director Heather Hood taught a studio course in city planning in which undergraduate students researched the conditions and created solutions for the San Pablo Avenue and Gilman Street corridors in Berkeley. San Pablo Avenue has been an underutilized commercial corridor of Berkeley for many years, a mix of one- and two-story stores and restaurants, some active and vibrant, others marginal. San Pablo Avenue goes through nine cities and is often experienced merely as a throughway rather than a series of places. The class examined how we can create a sense of "place" at this important node through land use revisions, streetscapes, new development and policy change. The clients were the City of Berkeley's Planning Department and a local nonprofit policy organization supporting smart growth, Livable Berkeley.
The City Planning 116 course is an intensive studio course that seeks to give students real-world experience with city planning. By focusing on one physical area, the course helps students learn about the entire range of city planning — physical building and street design issues, social and economic issues, environmental impacts, analysis methods, legal framework, city government, politics, and community dynamics.
During the course, students worked in the field and in the studio, undertaking a series of assignments that culminated in the preparation of a series of analyses and proposals for the area. The class grappled with issues such as: How can the corridor comfortably merge the varying surrounding uses and become a welcoming gateway to Berkeley from the freeway? How big should buidings be allowed to be? How should the city balance the strong need for housing with the impacts on the single-family home neighborhoods to the east? How do you create a pleasant character at the street level that encourages walking along this heavy traffic corridor? How should the city government set standards for the private sector? And how can Gilman Street be improved as an entry corridor, while recognizing that it is to remain an industrial corridor?
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