Marin City vs. Burlingame
In response to this week’s prompt:
“What did you learn from the Marin City site that you can apply to the new district you’re working on? What’s similar? What’s different about your current district, in terms of its challenges? What are you trying to add to the flood or fire adaptation ideas, in order to address the decarbonization, justice and jobs challenges of the Green New Deal Superstudio?”
Although the Marin City project was only a couple weeks ago, it felt like years since we’ve touched that project. Some of the things we learned from that project include the different types of land-water interfaces, different methods to managing storm water runoff, and the importance of establishing community through design. We did not however, look into detail regarding SLR and flood events. Nonetheless, I believe all the skills that were learned surrounding storm water management will come in very handy in this new project.
The community of Burlingame faces a similar flood risk to Marin City, where a 6ft rise in sea level would completely devastate the area. In addition, highway 101 cuts across both of theses neighborhoods and they both possess a buffer that separates them from the bay itself — the lagoon in Marin City and the island/canal in Burlingame. However the island in Burlingame is different in the way that it mitigates a lot more wave energy than the lagoon in the case of a flood event. Currently, the island is occupied mostly by hotels and there is office development on the way on the West side of the islands.
I believe that it’d be a great idea to extend these artificial islands, in effect creating canals that allow for increased capacity of storm water runoff. In the current district south of SFO, a cut-fill operation of the existing landscape just before the highway into the bay would also create said islands. In an ideal situation, the islands act as public space for the people in its vicinities and there will be dwelling units/infrastructure on the water, especially hotels.
On land, I’m proposing to daylight 3 of the lost creeks in my study area and provide a green buffer zone between the creek and newly proposed residential units. The buffer zone acts as protection from flooding of the creeks but also as a community park/greenway. My proposal will also replace most of the single family houses that already exist with denser, multi-family mid rises. These buildings will commercial lofts with stores and commerce on the ground floor, and housing on its upper floors. The housing units will be a mixture of market rate housing mixed with below-market rate housing, this is achievable by selling the units with bay area views at market rate while units with less desirable views can be below market rate.
The goal with the commercial lofts is to create “complete communities”, where people don’t have to drive their cars to visit a park or the grocery store. Ideally, there would also be avenues with civic/office buildings to round out the complete community, but I am still searching for a compromise. This idea of a complete community can help with carbon sequestration since more people will have better services closer to their home. In addition, it reinforces the idea of a communal identity as the people who live in the neighborhood gets familiar with the local businesses in the lofts as well as other people who live in the neighborhood through the neighborhood buffer zone parks.
