I'm not sure why I receive Oakland Magazine every month -- the label on the magazine says I should subscribe, but I don't and it keeps coming.
Anyway, I was pleased to see the magazine this month highlighting a number of up-and-coming projects throughout the city. Since this blog is usually filled with gloom and doom, I wanted to remind people that Oakland is still broadly on an upward trend.
The magazine highlighted such projects as the Oak-To-Ninth development, the Fox Theater, Uptown and the Army Base. In most cases, private enterprise is pushing into Oakland, making as much change as possible in spite of an idiotic city government.
While Oakland Magazine has a decidedly liberal bent, discussing these projects can't help but point out the positive trend associated with the city's gentrification. Oakland is slowly becoming a city of the affluent, and the transition can't happen quickly enough for me.
I even view the so-called "affordable" units in the city's new developments as a possible positive. Obviously, acceding to demands for these units permits the developers to move forward with their projects, and hopefully they are spread out enough to avoid turning into a ghetto.
It's amazing to see that private capital still flows into such a corrupt and dysfunctional city. Such is the power of capitalism. Oakland lies at the gateway to San Francisco, and even some of the worst crime problems in the nation have failed to stop the city's long-term betterment.
So, take a look at the Oakland Magazine article. I hope you too will marvel at the projects still underway, and hope as I do that the city doesn't figure out how to kill them.
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