At West Oakland BART Station, a planned housing development comes with a polarizing trade-off: nearly 400 parking spaces must go.
Signs posted around the station lot warn patrons of a transformation underfoot. The first phase comprises 240 affordable apartments, stacked over asphalt that currently bears white, rectangular markings for all the cars that swarm in daily from Alameda, Emeryville, the Oakland hills or the deep flatlands.
It’s the urbanists’ dream and the suburban motorists’ nightmare, when housing for cars becomes housing for people…