USA Sprawl Festival continued: East Bay, Kollyfornia

[James Bond Agent 007]

Link to the first thread in this series.
USA Sprawl Festival

Or, click on the following links to see just individual cities in that thread:

Kansas City
Some northern Denver suburbs
Albuquerque
Seattle
Las Vegas
Dallas-Fort Worth
Some western & southern Minneapolis suburbs
Orange County, California
Philadelphia
Tucson
Orlando
Northern Virginia/DC
Cleveland
Houston
Atlanta
Indianapolis
Long Island, New York
Jacksonville
Boston

And the 2nd round ones:

Phoenix-East
Phoenix-South
Phoenix-North
Phoenix-West
Portland
Silicon Valley
Los Angeles
San Bernardino County
San Diego - south
San Diego - north
Buffalo
Broward County, Florida
Dallas-Fort Worth II
Riverside County, California
Denver - south suburbs
Orange County II
Bergen and Passaic Counties, New Jersey
Milwaukee
Columbus
El Paso, with some Juarez
San Antonio
Detroit
Tampa
Cincinnati

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EAST BAY AREA, KOLLYFORNIA

Oakland and environs in case some of our non-American friends don't know.

The rule of thumb for these pics is, the fewer trees there are, the farther east the pic was taken. Except for new development, which tends not to have many trees at all.



Close-up of some newer houses. Looks like . . . the same thing in Silicon Valley, SoCal and Sacramento.










Not sprawl. Some inner-city areas of Oakland (I think) for comparison.
















At least it's got a BART station.




You can play tennis or go swimming on your lunch break. Only in Kollyfornia.




Gotta refine oil for all that sprawl. There's lots of refineries and oil tank farms in the Bay Area, especially the north Bay, it seems.


Oil is needed to get to these. God bless America, Land of Eternal Sprawl!


Are you bored yet?




Another close-up of new houses. At least they're somewhat dense.


New on the left, old on the right.




I believe this was pretty far east, almost to Stockton if I recall correctly.


Here I ventured farther west again, I think.


A denser sort-of neotraditional development along the waterfront (in Richmond or thereabouts).


Close-up of some older sprawl.


Here's what it all looked like before the sprawl . . .


. . . Now let's add some "improvements."


This was reasonably interesting. New housing on the edges of a mall. I think this was in Walnut Creek. It looked like this would normally be spots for "outparcel" development such as fast food joints. But it appears they decided to go another route for these particular lots. Good idea.


Typical "power center" shopping center. With houses in back.




Looks like the hillside stuff in my L.A. sprawl thread.


Back to the waterfront. I think this was in Alameda. At least it's dense.


More older not-so-sprawly inner city stuff, for comparison.


UC Berkeley, just for the heck of it.


Nice hillside stuff.


A traffic jam amid the sprawl. How appropriate.

[BigKidD]

Pleasant Hill, CA right next to Walnut Creek and Concord by the way. Head south of the Pleasant Hill Bart Station and you will hit the heart of Walnut Creek's downtown.

Doesn't look like Walnut Creek to me. Not much room to actually expand around here at all. Perhaps a community in the far interior of the East Bay.

[keninhalifax]

That neighbourhood with the many short cul-de-sacs and the long, white-roofed houses is absolutely hideous; it's the most poorly-designed street network I've seen in ages.

[BuildCTPlace]

Originally Posted by keninottawa

That neighbourhood with the many short cul-de-sacs and the long, white-roofed houses is absolutely hideous; it's the most poorly-designed street network I've seen in ages.

It's called a "trailer park" here in the U.S.

[sgoet]

The JC Penny mall in "walnut creek" actually looks like Hilltop Mall in Richmond.

[oak-sea]

Lets not forget the 97,000 acres of open space preserved as the East Bay Regional Park District: the largest urban park district in the United States. There may be sprawl in the 510 (good job on digging up some proof), but it ain't your run of the mill sprawl, and there is a hell of a lot of land that's been set aside for the newts and the owls.

[James Bond Agent 007]

I'm surprised I've gotten no comments about the A's.

Or maybe no one thought that commenting was worth the effort.

[BigKidD]

Quite a bit of open space in the East Bay. Takes me only 15 minutes to walk to near the nearest open space area and hike or mountain bike until I cannot any longer.

Interesting picture. It's funny that the houses and trees in this picture are not too old since the the previous ones burned down in the Oakland hills fire. Also, the traffic was probably caused by only one of the bores of the Caldecott tunnel open for traffic leaving Oakland and SF. The middle bore is shifted to accommodate heavy traffic throughout the day causing a significant slow down in traffic speed.
I'm a Giants fan by the way, so do what you want to the A's and the Coliseum.