Section 2 Street Corner View of Berkeley in 2050

If you are standing on a street corner in Berkeley in 2050, what will our city look like? Will our infrastructure adapt to make our lives more productive and enjoyable or will we feel the stress of too much change? The Vision 2050 task force attempted to transport ourselves to the future and imagined a Berkeley in 2050.

A Vision for Berkeley in 2050

What might a typical day look like in Berkeley in 2050? Our cool wet and warm dry seasons will give way to a much warmer and drier climate. With neighborhoods and supporting infrastructure specific to its place, there is no one vision of Berkeley in 2050. We chose to imagine a fall day to create a hypothetical story of what Berkeley could feel like as we adapt our infrastructure and ourselves to a different climate.

A Fall Day in Berkeley in 2050

Hi, I’m Maria! It’s already a warm morning as I cycle down the bike path, calling out to neighbors who are walking their kids to school and getting ready for work. I continue down the street, thankful for the protected bike lanes and the pothole free streets. What a difference Vision Zero has made to bike and pedestrian safety! I am on my way to the South Berkeley co-op where my great aunt Lizzie lives. She’s 85 but still learning, so we are going to a habitat restoration workshop at the updated Berkeley Marina.

My watch pings to let us know that the accessible shuttle, now celebrating its 20th year of electrified operation, will pick us up in five minutes. After we board, I take a moment to check my phone and see that my home’s smart energy system correctly rotated our solar panels to maximize their output and shaded the windows on the sunny south side.

When we arrive at the workshop, we learn that Berkeley High students trained in many kinds of habitat restoration are running the workshop. Aunt Lizzie is pleased to find out these services are now subsidized for low-income city residents. She sets up an appointment to have two experts come evaluate landscape opportunities at her co-op. _ _As we stroll down the waterfront, we see people coming and going from the bustling ferry terminal. Aunt Lizzie stops for a moment to remember what this area was like before Berkeley restored the wetlands to help protect the waterfront from sea-level rise and storm surges. It’s thrilling to see the snowy egrets hunting in the restored, climate-buffering wetlands.

On the way to lunch, we spot solar panels now producing a significant portion of the city’s power needs, and I particularly enjoy easy access to the strong secure Wi-Fi now available throughout the city. I’m still trying to convince Aunt Lizzie to get an Easy Access watch, but she prefers the old method of text messages on her phone.

After lunch, I return home and see the Berkeley fire department hard at work. They are inspecting homes in the neighborhood to be sure that debris is cleared away from our houses and that we are doing everything we can to prevent an urban wildland fire. It’s the time of year that the Diablo winds kick up. We are thankful for the Public Works Department who has undergrounded the overhead wires on Ashby and other evacuation routes. Aunt Lizzie takes a shuttle home to rest.

Hi, I’m Aunt Lizzie! The mid-afternoon heat is unbearable, so we seniors limit our outdoor activity then. Not long ago, the Home Helpers with an HCD grant, helped our co-op retrofit for this new climate – put white shingles on the roof, installed an attic fan, added insulation, installed an evaporative air cooling system, and raised the building to avoid the basement flooding. What a relief! And with all the new trees, our home is now comfortable and we didn’t have to move!

At around 4 pm my friend Annie knocks on the door – time for our outdoor concert at the plaza! Fortunately, the plaza has lots of benches and tables in the shade or we certainly wouldn’t be here! We pick our favorite spot under a leafy oak tree and close to the Mist Maker and watch children playing in the interactive fountain. It’s all recycled water, so we don’t worry about wasting water in this perpetual drought.

After the concert, Annie and I cross the street to the nearby park for our Tai Chi class. At the corner, we press the button for the “Extra Time to Walk” light; it gives us plenty of time to cross the street and we feel much safer. It’s time for home and dinner, so we walk to the shuttle stop in the soft down-glow of LED lights, mounted hip-level on the pathway’s stanchions. Life at 85 in 2050 is different from what we expected, but enjoyable nonetheless. New rain gardens now prevent those awful flooded intersections of 2020 and provide a little green oasis at every other corner! Annie and I look forward to the days of cooling sea breezes, but we feel so fortunate to live in Berkeley where 30 years ago someone thought to plan ahead! Berkeley is still an amazing and charming city.

Establishing Our Core Values

Berkeley’s deteriorating infrastructure requires allocating financial resources and resident support to remedy it. Although improvement opportunities exist, fixing infrastructure is expensive, is technical, and it is often met with inconsistent responses from residents and policymakers alike. The inadequate and inequitable repairs to infrastructure make people reluctant to finance it because people in poorer neighborhoods experience longer response to their infrastructures needs. Vision 2050 focuses on developing a resilient infrastructure that will not only withstand shocks, but also provides an opportunity to develop socioeconomic resilience to bring about employment opportunities to Berkeley residents, address issues of equity, and build a healthy city with the end goal of improving the overall quality of life of current and future residents.

Connecting the Dots

We have imagined a healthy and resilient city, with a booming local economy and less segregated in the year 2050. The vision has shown us how far we can go as a city. Climate resilience and hazard risks are relevant to Berkeley, instead of coming together during a time of disaster and crisis, it is better to unite in preparation before disaster strikes. Vision 2050 is the opportunity we have as residents to start a transformative change to help us adapt and cope with disasters and its impacts in a practical manner. Moving forward, an equitable approach to infrastructure should, every year, strengthen Berkeley’s equity and inclusion metrics through improvements in health equity that address all social determinants of health.

Place matters. Residents continue to experience growing health disparities across different neighborhoods. Life expectancy is not balanced across the city, population continues to grow, increasing demand for more and better infrastructure and services. Inequitable trends can be reversed as more affordable housing, accessible economic opportunities, and stronger tenant protections emerge in the city; therefore, providing a more stable living situation to vulnerable residents.

Repairing our infrastructure translates to establishing a local green economy, primarily driven by renewable energy, sustainable capital improvement projects, and responsible technology achievements. Getting there will take a lot of work and a significant financial lift. Financing a resilient Berkeley is a central question in our minds. Fortunately, the city is in good financial shape and confidently can prepare to take the step forward, allowing the city to formulate the long-range infrastructure plan for the next thirty years. The significant feature of Vision 2050 is planning for a more integrative built environment through technology, protecting the environment, having a sound financing structure to pay for the vision, and improving residents’ quality of life.

Vision 2050 will establish a sense of resilience, strengthen social networks, maintain a sustainable physical structure, and improve the quality of life for thousands of residents. Vision 2050 can help us achieve significant physical outcomes, yet disparities in equity and inclusion across income, race, ethnicity, ability, and gender has not been resolved, but we are on the right path to achieving it.

As we anticipate a future that is changing, our planning to meet those challenges should be thoughtful and guided by the principles of what we want Berkeley to be like. We call these core values. These values must be built into our efforts to build infrastructure for the future. The Vision 2050 task force developed the following four core values:

Equity – – Ensure benefits are equitably distributed and available and that they consider health status and school outcomes as well as access to jobs, housing, food and upward mobility
Public health and safety – Enhance public health, well-being and safety
Strong local economy – Develop local skills and capacity to keep jobs and economic benefits close to home
Resiliency and sustainability – Enhance abilities to withstand challenges and support future needs

These core values, applied to our infrastructure, results in:

Clean water and air
Shared and safe community spaces such as streets, sidewalks, public parks and other people-centered places
Transportation that connects us, improving mobility for all while reducing pollution and energy-use
Local and clean energy that is efficient, electrified, low-carbon and equitably provided
Natural habitats that are biodiverse and thrive in an urban environment
Fast and widely-accessible communications bringing all residents and businesses into the 21st century.
Resilient systems that make our schools, homes and businesses ready for fire, earthquakes, and floods