Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

The events surrounding the 1969 struggle over People’s Park in Berkeley, California were among the most violent confrontations of the 1960s era. Typically, these events are seen as an episode of increased student radicalism and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Instead, this paper argues that conflict over competing visions of urban space was at the center of the People’s Park violence. The park movement was a reaction to the University’s plan to raze existing older housing in order to expand the campus, build modernist high-rise residential towers, and pursue a joint urban renewal program with the city. Park supporters, which included many design professors and students, drew on emergent new paradigms in planning and architecture. The park became an inspirational test case for theories of community-based development in architecture and planning, exposing the profound divisions in the design professions that characterized this time.