The Resilient Oakland playbook is a strategy document developed to help our City tackle systemic and structural challenges. The playbook outlines ways we can work together to help our community can stay rooted, ensure equitable access to quality education and develop good jobs, stable housing, public safety and vibrant streets.
Oakland is one of the most diverse, creative and progressive urban coastal cities in the United States. As a major city in the Bay Area, Oakland also sits within one of the most prosperous economic growth engines in the world. The benefits of this growth, as acutely felt in Oakland, are not equitably distributed. Today, particularly among low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, Oakland faces rapidly rising income inequality and housing displacement, disparate unemployment and education rates, and chronic violence. A person living just one mile from a fellow Oaklander may be nearly twice as likely to be unemployed, and live 15 years less. Aging housing stock and public infrastructure challenged by seismic and climate risk further threaten Oakland residents, particularly our most vulnerable communities.
In this time of hyper-prosperity brought on, in part, by the technology and real estate booms in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland is uniquely positioned to take advantage of its growth while remaining true to its roots and sense of self. Resilient Oakland embraces Oakland’s strengths while tackling the daily and chronic stresses facing Oaklanders today and better preparing for tomorrow’s challenges.
Though comprehensive in scope, Resilient Oakland is not a finished product or a plan in the traditional sense. Rather, this playbook is a call to action. Resilient Oakland sets forth the work we need to do to begin modernizing our City by integrating processes, policies and programs that achieve greater impact. Resilient Oakland illuminates what is possible, whether it is breaking down workforce data by demographic population to better address the needs of our underserved residents or inviting our Human Services, Housing & Community Development, and Economic & Workforce Development departments to work together on leveraging economic and housing security strategies. Through this work, we are changing the way we do government. And in the process, we are making our institutions—both local and regional—more resilient and responsive to whatever may come our way.