Article

Shawn Whitehorn Jr. CCA M.Arch Research Lab Fall 2011 Instructor: Neal Schwartz

The initial interest of this investigation lies within representations of the urban fabric such as narratives, paintings, publishings, particularly in cartography. Cartography has shaped the way we perceive and conceptualize the world around us since the hieroglyph on papyrus in ancient Egypt; it freezes the intangible into a reality only existing at the mercies of its symbols.The power of cartography has shaped the way in which we conceptualize the natural, the built, the rural, and the urban. Reproductions of these conceptualizations through cultural, social, and political cartography have and continue to allow the digestion of space into symbols, symbols into maps, and maps into meaning.
And this is what maps give us, reality, a reality that exceeds our reach, our vision, the span of our days, a reality we achieve in no other way. We are always mapping the invisible or the unattainable or the erasable, the future or the past, the whatever-is-not-here-present-to-our-senses-now and, through the gift of maps, transmutting it into everything it is not...into the real, into the everyday. (Wood 15)

These representations ultimately become the impetus for processing urban environments' physicality and systems while producing meaning both temporal and permanent, factual and fantasy. Early urban cartography such as the architecturally ubiquitous Nolli map, by architect and surveyor Giambattista Nolli, is a historical reference as to how one understood interior and exterior, locale and region, and density and sprawl. The map is often argued as successful in that it deploys differentiation through black and white contrast as a means of allowing the viewer to process figure from ground. The figure ground representation of the Bufalini Map of 1551 also serves as a case of how the city is understood through centrality and the organization of districts.

Nolli's map of Rome,1 source: msa.mmu.ac.uk

Bufalini Map of Rome, 1551 source:nolli.uoregon.edu

Contemporary cartography and the use of the map has surpassed historical contexts in they are not two or three dimensional representations, but also digital and virtual forms of storing embedded information about systems, populations, and the relationships between the two. Geographic Information Systems [GIS] technology has transformed the static map into an active web of realtime topographical information, a means for mapping underrepresented settlements, a statistical resource, and an even integral tool mapping foreign territory in times of post-disaster relief. Pivotal moments in American history such as the Homestead Act, railroad construction, the Industrial revolution, mass immigration resulting in population growth, and urbanization all produced significant complexity of urban systems in cities. While the swell and complexity of urban centers produced many economical, social,

and political opportunities, it also created a need for assessing perceived or factual risks that arose from urban development. Not only were risks associated with the built environment in demand for assessment, but also the risks associated with the natural environment such as seismic risks as the Great Earthquake of 1906 and the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 caused loss of life and structures. The city of Oakland serves as a testbed for investigating ,collecting, interpreting, and reproducing these maps of risk from the early 20th century to 2010. By doing so, this enables the initial engagement with these maps of risk.

Timeline of Maps of Risk, Oakland, California

One of the earliest examples of cartography of risk is the Sanborn Map. The Sanborn map was the first map to engage, collect, and map data of the city by assessing information such as locations of windows, doors, and materiality of buildings, distance to other buildings and fire hydrants, location of sprinkler systems, local bodies of water,and other information regarding communities in detail.The original map was produced for fire insurance companies to assess the potential risks involved in underwriting policies, but has evolved into a tool of many fields and practices. Mapping risks in American cities had proven to be a success through the Sanborn Map and perhaps served as precedent to other inquiries of risks associated with urban communities.

N. Kaighn Avenue Sanborn Map, Camden, NJ source: City of Camden In the 1930's , World War 1 activities and population growth stimulated a need for FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and private sector to invest billions of dollars in residential and commercial development. While this created a need for investment, it simultaneously created a need for a tool of risk evaluation. This tool would essentially determine the investment and disinvestment in zones of most American cities. The Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC], a segment of the Federal Housing Authority [FHA], commissioned 229 American cities to produce residential security maps that would serve as a reference for positive and negative return on investments based on assessment of socio-economic, built, and cultural environments.
Confidential Residential Security Maps for all major U.S were prepared by the Home Owners Loan Corporation with special assistance from competent local real estate brokers and mortgage lenders, believed to represent a fair and composite opinion of the best qualified local people 1

Redlining, a term coined in the late 1960's by community activist and Northwestern professor John McKnight 2, is a method of evaluating and classifying communities for investment risks and securities, particularly active between the 1930s and 1950's. The Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC], a segment of the Federal Housing Authority [FHA], commissioned 229 American cities to produce residential security maps that would serve as a reference for positive and negative return on investments based on assessment of socio-economic, built, and cultural environments.

Richmond, VA Redline Map, 1935

Philadelphia Redline Map 1932

source: T-Races [Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces]
1. HOLC Division of Research and Statistics Appraisal Department, San Diego October 20, 1936. 2. http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu

The map is an amalgam of red, yellow, blue, and green hues signifying potentially hazardous to prime zones of real estate. Red zones were neighborhoods that carried undesirable populations or infiltration of these populations, particularly Negro, Latin, and Oriental 3. Within these odor filled communities from local factories, wage earners, clerical workers, and shopkeepers lived in older, low property value homes of which only about half owned. In addition, unstable salaries, high rental demand causing inflation, and very limited availability of mortgage funding were common in these zones. Yellow zones were expiring neighborhoods characterized by infiltration of undesirable populations, the lack of restrictions and homogeneity, and minimal access to educational facilities. The clerical workers, white collar employees, and shopkeepers that lived in moderately valued properties differed from the previously mentioned residents in that these areas were zoned for single family residential development unlike the dense housing of the red zone. Blue zones consisted of minor executives, office workers, artisans, and storekeepers who often enjoyed attractive homes located near educational facilities, shopping centers, and local and San Francisco transportation systems. No concentration of ethnic groups and ample mortgage funding for existing and new construction differs this zone from the red and yellow zones. Green zones were zones where mostly professional and business executives enjoyed mansions positioned in prime real estate areas characterized by lush landscape and views to the San Francisco Bay. Concentrations of ethnicities as well as rental demand were obsolete while mortgage funding and even the opportunity of maximum loans with 10-15 year amortization, which were unheard of previously, were ample. All of these descriptions were used not only by the Federal Housing Agency [FHA] and the Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC] but private investors, small business owners, even grocers sought these maps for investment gauging.

Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda Residential Security Map, 1937

source: Oakland, Berekely,and Alameda Residential Security Map, http://salt.unc.edu/T-RACES/, 2009

3. Area description language from Oakland Residential Maps by the City of Oakland; inspector: Ralph Prentice, 1937

Red Zone, Residential Security Map, 1937

Yellow Zone, Residential Security Map, 1937

Blue Zone, Residential Map, 1937

Green Zone , Residential Security Map, 1937

While the risks that were associated with historical redlining were often based on investment activities the map still retains significant value in the gauging risks and securities in contemporary urban investments. Environmental issues that result from industrial development such as toxic emissions and the creation of brownfields serve as a serious risk that, historically, only those that could afford to be concerned had alternative options. In concert with maps that define environmental risk, the use of liquefaction risks maps have also been highly reproduced as the need to assess zones that present risk due to weaker soils have become an increasing issue due to historical accounts of loss and structural failures as a result of earthquakes.

Oakland Liquefaction Risk Map

source: Liquefaction Hazard Map, http://earthquake.usgs.gov /regional/nca/alameda/2009

This map shows the liquefaction hazard in the communities of Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Piedmont for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Hayward fault. The map predicts the approximate percentage of each designated area that will liquefy and show surface manifestations of liquefaction such as sand boils and ground cracking. Liquefaction is a phenomenon that is caused by earthquake shaking. Wet sand can become liquid-like when strongly shaken. The liquefied sand may flow and the ground may crack and move causing damage to surface structures and underground utilities. The map depicts the hazard at a regional scale and should not be used for site-specific design and consideration. Subsurface conditions can vary abruptly and borings are required to address the hazard at a given location. 4

More contemporary risks such as the presence of methamphetamine labs and foreclosures that were not considered risks during the era of redlining. While the production of a methamphetamine map is produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA], the risks associated with living in proximity affect a myriad of investment concerns relating to violent and property crimes. Using violent and property crime reports from 2010 and illustrating them through gradients representing density allowed for the investigation of relationships between these maps and historical maps of risk. These reports are also often used by investors for gauging areas of safety for development.

4.

Northwestern Alameda County Liquefaction Hazard Maps .http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/alameda/ , 2009

Property Crime Density; Oakland, 2010

Violent Crime Density; Oakland, 2010 Political, Economical, and Socio-economic climates evolve as do the urban centers in which they exist, while the evolution of risks remains. What are the overlaps of risks produced in Sanborn and residential security maps with contemporary risks of urban development such as violent and property crimes that may not have previously existed. Have any historical risks perpetuated risks faced in urban contemporary development? Scale is a serious issue in not only engaging the city in development but in the level of research . Comprehensive ground-level understanding of embedded systems, both built, social, and virtual can offer insight into the representations. Deploying techniques of photographic and literary documentation,filming, and interviewing can build a compelling visual and audible archive of experiential data offering insight into these zones. Exploring boundary conditions associated with these maps of urban risk may give insight into spatial, materiality, and experiential qualities existing at these margins. These qualities are integral in understanding the physical and experiential discontinuity and or transitions in Oakland's urban systems that occur as a result. Extracting quantitative and qualitative data from these techniques, historical documents, publications, and other resources have the potential to build a strong body of inputs for data-scaping, diagramming, mapping, modeling, etc. In doing so, I hope to establish an investigative, representative, and possible design language specific and unique to this investigation.

An initial hypothesis of this investigation based on findings from these maps is that while cartography such as urban maps of risk may be tools of representing and understanding systems embedded within Oakland's urban fabric, perhaps it is also serving as an impetus for perpetual marginalization. While these maps of urban risk may serve as a representation of the city of Oakland, perhaps these maps may have actually produced a concentration of capital,development, and social services in some regions of Oakland while stripping other zones of the same. A goal for this investigation is to reveal threads of risk evolution as the source of spatial discrepancies and disparities in Oakland's urban community. In revealing this condition, do I also believe that opportunities of conceptualizing how cultural, socio-economic, and political exchange can occur at both body to body and body to built scales. While keeping architecture as the resulting spatial construct based on research, new objectives emerge as to what or how this architectural product can address issues associated with urban risk cartography. How can architecture become a mechanism for subverting these influences and producing new cartographies in which zones that once existed as a risk may perhaps become areas of interest? How can architecture become a vehicle for promoting socio-economic, political, and cultural integration across the margins of polarized communities as concluded by these maps?In interrogating this boundary, the opportunity for a possible site emerges as a testbed for subverting the boundaries illustrated in these maps. The intention of working within this boundary is not to celebrate this boundary condition as in some instances it is not a readily visible phenomenon, but rather collapse this boundary as a means of promoting integration and influencing shifts and even subversions of these influences.

References:

Wood, Dennis. The Power of Maps New York: Guilford Press, 1992

"Residential Security Maps" http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu. n.d. Web. 2011.

HOLC Division of Research and Statistics Appraisal Department, San Diego October 20, 1936.

"Oakland,Berkeley, and Alameda Residential Security Maps." http://salt.unc.edu/T-RACES, T-RACES, n.d. Web. 2009.

Northwestern Alameda County Liquefaction HazardMaps. Http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca.alameda, USGS, n.d. Web. 2009

Violent Crime Hotspot Summary for 2010.InfoAlamedacounty.org, County of Alameda, n.d. Web, 2011 Property Crime Hotspot Summary for 2010. InfoAlamedacounty.org, County of Alameda, n.d. Web, 2011