You might wanna consider a railway museum. The California state Railroad Museum is a good one to go off of, and maybe it uses the historical line and uses original railway infrastructure. That might protect one of the sidings you put down, but I'd love to see something like that.
For this to be a historically black neighborhood, I really believe there needs to be a historical church somewhere here. Even if parts of the neighborhood have been destroyed, the church could have been a landmark being a hot bed and common place of meeting for black activists in leaders in the city.
I really value the amount of effort you put into creating this city in a realistic and accurate way. The backstory behind the motorway is amazingly intricate, and the inclusion of the gay bar is really next level. You don't shy away from these topics even though they might be controversial here on youtube. You include them, because this is what real cities are like, and I seriously applaud you for that!
Wow, I always thought that NorCal, especially the "Cascadian" part doesn't get enough love and here it is, Cabrillo. And the freeway park looks both like a great place to relax with a view on the city and a reminder how much of an urban planning nightmare was spared by cancelling another freeway cutting through the city.
Jacobs Park named after Jane Jacobs who was a main figure in canceling the lower manhattan expressway. Maybe she played some role in doing the same in Cabrillo
Maybe a name like "303 Park" as a reminder to what the freeway would be called. Or perhaps a dedication to a civil engineer important to the city's history and infrastructure development.
Out in Oakland they have their Train Station that hasn't been used since the 89' Earthquake. They now use it for films and special events. Maybe have something similar? It would be interesting to have something like that in Cabrillo.
Good to note that gentrification is typically associated with active displacement of current residents which is how a distinction between redevelopment (which is typically a new land-use type: industrial->residential) and gentrification (typically apt->owned unit conversions and most of the time is accompanied by rent hikes, demolition, strict code enforcement). Pres does a good job framing a lot of the negative connotations that comes along with it! Rock on comrade love the series!
Are you aware of How skibbith does his series Yellow Hill 2? A very cool concept where his patreons can buy plots of land or specific buildings and he develops super realistic businesses and storefronts, earn reputation, his own currency system, and even become mayor. It's definitely smaller scale than Cabrio but I've really enjoyed following along and seeing how his audience really is dictating most of the entire build
Because the highway had polluted the cheonghyecheon for a long time (like for 30~40 years), the city demolished the highway and made the stream again artificially.. And.. That mayor who managed the project once became the president of ROK.
Highways are fine and important in connecting rural areas together but they should really end/become less intrusive as they enter cities, and I think that's what a lot of American cities lack. Great video as always!
I never knew that bit about reclaimed freeways becoming parks, nor the sordid history around freeway construction. A unique build to be sure, and I'm all about reclamation of historical spaces as well as alternate universe worldbuilding. A new favorite episode to be sure.
Hey Pres, I love how you're making this series a lesson in equitable urban development and community ownership! I'm nerding out in these episodes xD When I think of participatory policy making in the modern context, I think of Zoom call town halls...maybe there can be livestreams where community members advocate for concepts they believe should exist in Cabrillo.
Been binging Cabrillo the past couple of days, and absolutely loving the series - especially the sociopolitical commentary and the urban planning knowledge on display. It's just amazing to watch. No idea how well this would work, but maybe give some of the higher patron tiers a property in Cabrillo and start a competition among them - that they have to influence urban design decisions in a way that boosts their land value the most by the end of the series?
Some of the freeway master plans are terrifying to look at today how so many cities would have been even more segregated by freeways then they already are
23:25 that avenue junction connecting to the bridge could really use some dedicated turning lanes, really annoying how all the traffic chooses the same lane when there's so many lanes lmao
I think it might be a nice idea to have like a municipal vehicle depot underneath the highway. Like a trailer office for the city parks dpt. with a motor pool of golf carts and maintenance equipment.
Dallas, Texas...an existing bridge over the Trinity River was transformed into a park alongside the new Margaret Hunt Hill bridge, designed by Sergio Calatrava. She was a local heiress/philanthropist, and in all ways, the new bridge represented the coming gentrification of the low-income, mostly hispanic poplulation West Dallas. The old Continental Avenue bridge was renamed after Ron Kirk, a relatively recent black mayor. So, in a different way, all of the forces you mention were present in this example. Dallas also has a reclaimed "deck park" over a bypass freeway. And we are very close to dismantling a major elevated freeway, to reclaim the rights of way below it, and to create a network of boulevards to knit the bifurcated neighborhoods back together (although I don't know that I'll live to see it).
Really glad you got to share the story of racism in urban planning through this build. My only comment with the video is that I think there are too many trees on the roads, it was quite hard to see what buildings were there and from a pedestrian level, it might feel too dense? Otherwise, love your builds!
At some area near inner carrillo you should start a big chain of parks that you connect via water/parkways like boston's emerald necklace or Boise's ribbon of jewels. You could name the parks after important people from carrillo/NorCal and i think it would add a ton of depth into the realism of the city and add to the already great atmospheric bits of the series.
I'm honestly really loving this project. I'd love to see references to something like El Camino Real in the Bay area. Also, maybe the tracks by the river could be upgraded and used for a regional rail network, making the station part of the riverside park landscape.
This freeway idea was fantastic; great vids Pres! Edit: Also, would you consider placing a few car dealerships in Cabrillo? I feel like dealerships are a common sight in North American cities, yet I rarely see them built in City Skylines. I think you should give it a shot!
This project is kinda like the Seoullo 7017 Park built on a former 1 km highway overpass on South Korea! I love these projects you do in Cities Skylines
That gay bar is super interesting - obviously there have always been black-owned queer spaces and queer spaces in lower-income communities, but they've generally been hit pretty hard by gentrification. It feels like that bar could very well be part of a chain, or probably be quite expensive, to make up for the property value, so it doesn't really serve the same people the original queer spaces did. There's also an ongoing movement to have more community-run queer spaces that don't revolve around alcohol! Some super interesting debates
An idea for polls based off the trade-offs you were talking about: in the poll you could provide two proposals, for example the freeway park you built here, or the Black neighborhood it was built through. It gives you the option of building what would've been replaced.
I think you nailed South Cabrillo. It really looks like a real place - it’s exactly how I would expect a gentrifying neighborhood like this to look. It could be interesting to have a local institution somewhere in the path of the planned freeway where the revolts centered: maybe a bar or hotel that people occupied until the city backed down. At the very least, I hope you indicate the route the freeway would have taken in some way, even if it’s just a line of redeveloping parking lots.
the ideas that u talked about in the beginning of the episode about the building of highways and how it affected minority groups I wrote a paper on that exact thing. A lot of it comes down to socioeconomic status. It’s pretty unfortunate how many communities were destroyed.
I'm pretty certain successful highway revolts were carried out by organised communities within the inner cities. Suburbanites couldn't care less about highways through older neighbourhoods. Besides that, I watched a ood deal of Infrastructurists video's including polls. They generally worked like this: An area was designated for urban renewal. 2 choices were offered, advantages and disadvantages for both were listed. The next video saw the poll results and the implementation of said result. You already take care of step 1 and 3. But perhaps more importantly, Infrastructurist's cities were gritty, dirty and often presented as struggling. This affected the choices, because the choices were about adressing problems. There weren't many expensive choices, especially later on as he got better at it. Besides that, Infrastructurist always treated his cities as complete; there's no reason to wait with polls untill your city is completed. Just complete the area involved. So TLDR recommendations: State the issue of the city council, what problem has to be adressed here? Present the advantages and disadvantages of both choices. Complete the area up to the point that you can explain the issue, assume the rest of the city is built. Possibly build area's that have problem, South Cabrillo looks more than fixed, for example. Wild idea's? Some kind of very crude budgets that allow for more expensive choices later on if your voters are more penny-pinching early on. Simple integers would suffice here. Political deadlock, nothing happens unless the vote wins by a 55% margin?
You should have carried through with the urban freeway. I love freeways. Especially how they wrap around and shield decent communities from... you know... them...
An interesting idea for future development and a vote in the future could revolve around a dilapidated and underperforming old baseball field in the outskirts of the city and whether or not the city retrofits, rebuilds, or relocates the ballfield. You could build a new ballfield downtown and turn the old ballfield into apartments, shops, etc. retrofit the existing ballfield, rebuild it and add transit to make it more of a destination. You can DM for more info but the inspiration comes mostly from Parkview Field in Fort Wayne, IN and Indianapolis, IN. Could be a fun idea that offers trade offs and a potentially interesting build somehow turning a ballfield into apartments. Just an idea
Hey, Pres! I have a suggestion for future episodes. Since this series is heavily focused on smart and state-of-the-art infrastructure you should consider adding construction sites around the city! Most of the infrastructures you mention are implemented in American cities only recently, therefore many of them could still be under construction. For example, you could add bus lane or bike lane retrofitting construction sites, roundabouts(don't exaggerate with these ahahah), high-speed rail lines under construction(California High-Speed Rail Authority RU-vid channel could be a good source of inspiration), and so on. These will surely add dynamism to the city. They will give a good representation of the "price" the city has to pay to have new and modern infrastructures (keeping in mind that transportation infrastructure wouldn't exist without big and noisy construction sites)!
Something that popped in my mind, but I think that for the polls to work well, Carrillo needs more "bad" areas with problems that can be solved via the polls. The built areas look really clean and beautiful, so why would it needs replacing 😅
maybe naming this place as mandela square? Named after nelson mandela, and maybe the old resident voted to change the name after the highway has sucessfully been canceled .If you already named a place that ,then no worries,I just got recommended this video and i just started watching it.
And thanks for the great compliment to Boston! The Rose Kennedy Greenway is such a relaxing and beautiful place now being old enough to remember the green rusty metal double decker highway that used to be there bisecting the city from the Italian area of North End.
The name Cabrillio puts me in mind of another poor neighborhood that was pretty famous - Cabrini Green in Chicago, that went from a shining example of public housing in the 40's to one of the most infamous slums in the country , they began demolishing it in the late 90's. If you want to show South Cabrillio "as it was" maybe build a Cabrini, the buildings used are available on the workshop. Loving the series so far!
I have somewhat of a criticism of the way you arrange buildings. While this is not specific to only you, I feel that it's unrealistic for buildings of different styles and eras to be physically touching each other. There is usually some sort of alley in which you have dumpsters, trashcans, graffiti and mopeds. Even when not separated by alleyways; buildings usually have some space between them due to the limits of how thin construction workers are (with some exceptions for when buildings that are part of a complex built by one developer). The alleys are sometimes used by intrepid-cyclists to avoid car-traffic, which can be reflected by having some of these narrow spaces being make-shift bike-paths.
I mean, once we aren't working in wall-to-wall areas it will definitely look different. But I'm not too concerned with small details like this, I'm trying to expand the city fast.
Been living in SF since 2018. Everything about that freeway park is great, zone into an actual park! I’d love to see how you implement the aspect of multi-city neighborhood hubs. Northern California has so many great neighborhoods 🥰🥰🥰
One way to add community participation could be 2 rounds of consultation on projects. The first round would be a choice between multiple options which could include no changes as an option. The second round would be after an option is chosen to ask for feedback on detailed design. This is similar to what governments do IRL at least from what I've seen. The city is really coming along nicely and as an Urban planning student it is great to here these concept discussed in the video.
For that south district you should make an entertainment district you know, movies, music, dancing, talent shows, etc. I think it was add a Hollywood vibe and a touch of character :) btw I think the name should be south parkland
I really like the idea of a Cabrillo: Season 2 for polls and votes. That could also be a really cool opportunity to do a sort of before-and-after series, where we get to see just how much the city has changed--just how much *we* have changed the city, even. Also, it goes without saying, but he freeway park looks dope. I lived in NYC for three years and somehow never went to the High Line, but it was always on my list. This looks like how I always imagined the High Line would look.
I get what you mean by people being forced out of places where I live a couple years ago houses were affordable and now with the growth and expansion of my city and all these investments and projects being done housing prices skyrocketed making my city mostly for middle class people to live comfortably :/
Portland had a huge Freeway plan a long time ago and they had a fight about it. Not sure I remember it too well. Watched something on it here on RU-vid.
You're timing is impeccable. Here it is, Sunday morning--and here I am, surfing for something interesting to distract me from all my work... I am thinking seriously about using this video as a source in my freshmen social studies class. Generating an understanding of the RELEVANCE of Geography and Civics for/with students is something I'm continuously preoccupied with. Civics, these days is an easier sell--but Geography, as interesting as development, urbanization, globalization, gentrification, etc., etc. are, is sometimes harder to sell. I hope you don't mind if I contextualize the lesson with a primer about urban planning, why it's important, and (using publicly available info you've published) how you use Cities Skylines as a learning tool in your degree path. If there were some important takeaways that you think I should include please let me know. I'm struck by the juxtaposition of gentrification in South Cabrillo and the displacement of black people with the headlining of a cyclist-friendly gay club. #ironic I wonder to what extent gay black men are welcome at this new club. I assume you're familiar with recent issues coming to the forefront around white racism in the LGBTQ community. How is new South Cabrillo reforming itself to become a truly diverse neighborhood? Really have loved this episode. Your design and aesthetics are gorgeous. Your willingness to engage contemporary themes is awesome. Still wondering about the whiteness of that bar. Name suggestion... Rustin Lourde Park -- named for Bayard Rustin and Audre Lorde.
That's excellent to hear! If you want to share it, I would also recommend sharing a clip (I'm sure you can find one) of Eric Avila of UCLA talking about freeway revolts and how they were a fundamentally white phenomenon. His book (just read it - "Folklore of the Freeway") goes into this in detail, but I'm sure there's a short clip out there of him explaining this more eloquently than me.
There’s also a cultural lesson to be had here - another side of Folklore of the Freeway is that Black and Hispanic neighborhoods throughout the nation have reclaimed the space under the freeways that destroyed their neighborhoods through art. See Chicano Park in San Diego.
This isn't to Pres, I'm saying this to some people on this comments section. Highways, freeways, interstates aren't bad things. When the federal highway act passed in 1954 (?) it was really needed as US was in the urgent need of proper connections. HOWEVER, after some time, US governments just started to overbuild them, building freeways to everywhere, in the middle of neighborhoods. Highways and freeways aren't bad, their locations and planning is bad.
This is not a bad comment, for sure. The idea of having interstate highways is not the problem. Cars are not always the problem. It's urban freeways and their racist geographic and economic consequences that are the issue.
I'm a year late but gonna drop my thoughts anyway - First, having grown up in NorCal, I love this so much. The idea of a dense, walkable city on the Mendocino coast, with good transit and bike infrastructure, plenteous and thoughtful green spaces, an Amtrak connection, a mountain, bridges...I want to live there badly. Second, and I'm sure the history here has been developed more since this video came out so all this is probably moot - I'm thinking about the history of Cabrillo vs. Camp Walker. I don't know what it would mean for Cabrillo to have been incorporated five years before California statehood (was it originally incorporated as a Mexican town, despite being somewhat north of pretty much all Spanish colonial settlement in California?), but it doesn't make sense to me to set up a mining camp *in* an established town. So I'm wondering if Cabrillo wasn't originally the name of a small (Spanish or Mexican, hence the name) settlement a little ways downriver from modern-day Cabrillo, probably a fishing village, and when the Walker party made their camp nearby and others followed, the name Cabrillo gradually migrated from the old coastal settlement to the new mining one. The remains of the fishing village would probably be a minor tourist attraction with some interpretive signs. There would likely also have been a Pomo settlement nearby, which maybe had an okay relationship with the little fishing town, but fast-growing mining settlements and their attendant environmental destruction don't foster good relations, and Cabrillo has undoubtedly had its share of California's history of genocidal violence against Indigenous groups.
In Utrecht they filled up one of the city's moats in the 60s and constructed a highway in its place, but over the last year's they reversed it and now it is a beautiful moat/park! You can check it out on the Bicycle Dutch channel :)
You could call the park Seneca Park, in honor of the black neighbourhood it destroyed. I got inspired by Seneca Village, which was a black village were now sits Central Park
I feel very strongly in favor of doing “new seasons” of projects in this game. Few CS ever revisit cities. The reality is that so much of urban planning is reconfiguring spaces. Yet, almost all CS series on youtube are new builds.
Dunno if you've already named it, but it would be cool to riff off the High Line in NYC and The Bentway in Toronto (a cool park built under an urban expressway, bents are the supports that hold it up) and name it something trendy like Bridge Deck Park, The Viaduct, The Metroway, etc etc.
Hey Pres... lovely decision about polls. I think you should left some urbanistic problems to resolve in future like transit, habitation or even health care, I don't know. Because a real life city never ends its problems. Cheers from Brazil.
South Cabrillo is meant to be a heavily gentrified area, I would petition to name the area "NuCab" It's a play on the large city in my region, Louisville. Louisville had a portion of it's riverfront area heavily gentrified and it was renamed "NuLu". I think the name can be contributed to the city commission's attempt to cover up an obvious encroachment on affordable housing and dismantling of a community with a "cutesy" nickname.
Great video! I think it would be cool to see a physical disjuncture in the building styles or maybe even a few missing ones where the freeway was meant to run. I'd imagine many existing buildings would have been bought out/seized and demolished, even if the rest of the freeway was eventually not built.
Pres, just discovered your channel. Awesome video! Glad I stumbled across this. Also, glad you mentioned Infrastructurist. Loved what they did and miss their content. What I loved the most was the way viewers were asked to contribute to the development of the city teamed with a history lesson, similar to your freeway revolt lesson. Keep up the awesome work and you have a new subscriber in me!
Wonderful, your work is astonishing, but I do think you should name the park Nesting Park. During the day you can see many birds and many bird nests in the park. I just want something to be named in Cabrillo by me.
You might step on some unsavory topics for some but I think it's super important to face it and talk about it!! I appreciate it and I think it makes your city have great depth and realism.
Loving this build, your intro reminded me of Liverpool One in the UK, it's a modern shopping centre that kinda feels like a canyon and it's roof is a park with restaurants. You taught me something I didn't know about America highways, so thank you. In regards to a park name I would personally go with one of three choices, name it after the neighbourhood it runs through, name it after what the highway was going to be called or name it after the off ramp names I know in theuk they are Junction followed by a number, not sure about America though
I think now that all the lower income households have kinda been pushed out of the immediate area you should have a more run down part of town across the tracks, the tracks will work as a good divider between the two areas. The history behind the run down part of town could be that it’s dealing with over population from all the lower income citizens that had nowhere else to go and now that part of town has huge homeless and crime problems in it. And another cool minor detail you could add in higher end parts of the city but not the lower income part could be some hostile architecture towards the homeless like spikes under freeways for example to help explain why the homeless population is so bad in the lower income area.
Loved the shout out to Top Dog! Octavia Blvd in San Francisco ends in a park constructed after the central freeway was torn down, which popped to mind immediately when you mentioned freeways replaced with parks. As for a name, this is a little lame but Ukiah backwards is Haiku, and I could see the park including a public art and poetry space as part of its dedication, so how about Haiku Park (maybe stylized as High-Ku like the High Line?)
it would be cool if the newer developments around the highway park had access to it, in an effort to make it more street like and not so much separated from the city (i think the highline in ny has some stuff like that) about elevated highways being turned into a park, there's a decades long discussion about turning the minhocão, an elevated higway that cuts through são paulo's city center, into a park, and recently the idea has gained more friction because there's been an enormous effort to "retrofit" and revitalize the historic center of the city, where the highway goes through (today, são paulos downtown is one of the most diverse places in the city, with people from all around the world, many residential occupations in abandoned buildings, many lgbtqi+ clubs and communities, etc, so the "renovation" is more in the sense of "cleaning out" who lives there to make way to private investments). i particularly hate the idea of turning this highway into a park because unlike the highline example (that people love to use) or this case in carbrillo, the minhocão does not pass inside city blocks, but above an avenue that once was the most important one in the city, completely destroying it. this avenue is also too small and already had high rise buildings built immediately on the sidewalk, so when the elevated highway was constructed, it basically made everything under the 3rd floor a tunnel, with cars passing right at peoples windows.
How dare you consider the effects of history on our modern cities! Let us imagine that cities sprung, fully formed like the designers of this game intended!
Surprised you didn’t mention the former Harbor Drive in Portland. It was the first major freeway removal in the United States. It created the riverfront of Portland as we know it today
