Karen Trapenberg Frick - Remaking the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge: A Case of Shadowboxing with Nature

On 17 October 1989 one the largest earthquakes to occur in California since the San Francisco earthquake of April 1906 struck Northern California. Damage was extensive, none more so than the partial collapse of the San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge's eastern span, a vital link used by hundreds of thousands of Californians every day.

The bridge was closed for a month for repairs and then reopened to traffic. But what ensued over the next 25 years is the extraordinary story that Karen Trapenberg Frick tells here. It is a cautionary tale to which any governing authority embarking on a megaproject should pay heed.

She describes the process by which the bridge was eventually replaced as an exercise in shadowboxing which pitted the combined talents and shortcomings, partnerships and jealousies, ingenuity and obtuseness, generosity and parsimony of the State's and the region's leading elected officials, engineers, architects and other members of the governing elites against a collectively imagined future catastrophe of unknown proportions. In so doing she highlights three key questions:

• If safety was the reason to replace the bridge, why did it take almost 25 years to do so?
• How did an original estimate of $250 million in 1995 soar to $6.5 billion by 2014?
• And why was such a complex design chosen?

Her final chapter part epilogue, part reflection provides recommendations to improve megaproject delivery and design.

Karen Trapenberg Frick is Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Co-Director of the University of California Transportation Center and Assistant Director of the University of California Center on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation.

Planning, History and Environment Series

Editor:

Ann Rudkin, Alexandrine Press, Marcham, UK

Editorial Board:

Professor Arturo Almandoz, Universidad Simn Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela and Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Professor Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Professor Scott A. Bollens, University of California, Irvine, USA

Professor Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Professor Meredith Clausen, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Professor Yasser Elsheshtawy, UAE University, Al Ain, UAE

Professor Robert Freestone, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Professor John R. Gold, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

Professor Michael Hebbert, University College London, UK

Selection of published titles

Planning Europe's Capital Cities: Aspects of nineteenth century development by Thomas Hall

Selling Places: The marketing and promotion of towns and cities, 1850-2000 by Stephen V. Ward

The Australian Metropolis: A planning history edited by Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone

Utopian England: Community experiments 19001945 by Dennis Hardy

Urban Planning in a Changing World: The twentieth century experience edited by Robert Freestone

Twentieth-Century Suburbs: A morphological approach by J.W.R. Whitehand and C.M.H. Carr

Council Housing and Culture: The history of a social experiment by Alison Ravetz

Planning Latin America's Capital Cities, 18501950 edited by Arturo Almandoz

Exporting American Architecture, 18702000 by Jeffrey W. Cody

The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing by AnneMarie Broudehoux

Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An urban kaleidoscope in a globalizing world edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy

Globalizing Taipei: The political economy of spatial development edited by Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok

New Urbanism and American Planning: The conflict of cultures by Emily Talen

Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, scarcity and space. 1949-2005 by Duanfang Lu

Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities edited by David L.A. Gordon

Planning the Megacity: Jakarta in the twentieth century by Christopher Silver

Designing Australia's Cities: Culture, commerce and the city beautiful, 1900-1930 by Robert Freestone

Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, democracy and urban space in Latin America edited by Clara Irazbal ( paperback 2015 )

The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, modernity and urban development edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy

Stockholm: The making of a metropolis by Thomas Hall

Dubai: Behind an urban spectacle by Yasser Elsheshtawy

Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning in central and southeastern Europe edited by Emily

Gunzburger Maka and Tanja Damljanovi Conley ( paperback 2015 )

Lessons in Post-War Reconstruction: Case studies from Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 war edited by Howayda Al-Harithy

Orienting Istanbul: Cultural capital of Europe? edited by Deniz Gktrk, Levent Soysal and pek Treli

Olympic Cities: City agendas, planning and the world's games 1896-2016 , 2nd edition edited by John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold

The Making of Hong Kong: From vertical to volumetric by Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Thomas Kvan ( paperback 2015 )

Urban Coding and Planning edited by Stephen Marshall

Planning Asian Cities: Risks and resilience edited by Stephen Hamnett and Dean Forbes

Staging the New Berlin: Place marketing and the politics of reinvention post-1989 by Claire Colomb

City and Soul in Divided Societies by Scott A. Bollens

Learning from the Japan City: Looking East in urban design, 2nd edition by Barrie Shelton

The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs edited by Sonia Hirt with Diane Zahm ( paperback 2015 )

Of Planting and Planning: The making of British colonial cities, 2nd edition by Robert Home

Healthy City Planning: Global health equity from neighbourhood to nation by Jason Corburn

Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe discovered the lost art of urbanism by Peter Hall

The Planning Imagination: Peter Hall and the study of urban and regional planning edited by Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Nicholas Phelps and Robert Freestone

Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow? A new future for cottage estates by Martin Crookston

Sociable Cities: The 21st-century reinvention of the Garden City by Peter Hall and Colin Ward

Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s2000s by Arturo Almandoz

Planning the Great Metropolis: The 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs by David A. Johnson ( paperback 2015 )

Remaking the San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge: A case of shadowboxing with nature by Karen Trapenberg Frick

A Case of Shadowboxing with Nature

Karen Trapenberg Frick

First published 2016
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Karen Trapenberg Frick

This book was commissioned and edited by Alexandrine Press, Marcham, Oxfordshire

The right of the authors has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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