Friday, July 6, 2012

Bayview Hunters Point is "Constructionville"

If you live in Bayview Hunters Point, you live in "Constructionville."

Especially along the waterfront, at Hunters Point Shipyard and on Hunters Point Hill ... where natural beauty competes with heavy machinery ... life is driven as much by blueprints as the needs of people who live in those places.

Pictures taken in the area last week offer a glimpse of economic promise and current conditions: unpleasant for even the most development-friendly resident.

Love it or hate it, urban planning and large scale development are now reshaping the neighborhood, and creating complicated quality of life and health issues for residents. That is surprising to no one who understands that Bayview Hunters Point's population will double in 20 years, and that the neighborhood is home to one of the largest swaths of urban development in the country.

A bicycle path with an unusually robust barrier from traffic waits to be biked as a truck drives by on Cargo Way.  The Blue Greenway project is incorporated into the plan.

The first Hunters View Housing was built in 1956, and in recent years became emblematic of public housing injustice as construction created health problems for residents and the structures themselves deteriorated dramatically.  It was torn down to make way for the more imposing structure, pictured, rising from the Northern slope of Hunters Point Hill.

The grain elevator and cranes near RE Resources are considered part of the northern gateway to Bayview Hunters Point, and will be the site of an arts installation under the jurisdiction of the Port of SF with facilitation from the SF Arts Commission.

This semi-circular concrete structure is one of two that will create a gateway and seating area for those entering Heron's Head Park and the EcoCenter built by Literacy for Environmental Justice.

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