Oakley City Development – Term Paper

Chapter 4: Results and Discussion; Cases

4.0. Case 1: Oakley City

The city of Oakley was the beneficiary of the American Public Works Association main project of the year based on its advances in the development of Main Street Reconstruction of Northern California. The project development was based on a review of candidate projects arising from different municipalities of the Northern California which culminated into the selection of the winner as the Oakley Main Street project. The award was a presentation of the public works in a bid to enhance the city or urban design. The project was considered a major moment of the entire city to have a critical project that will define the performance perspective of the city. The development and success of this project was a product of group work across the entire city department beginning from the planning stage to the final construction. The development of the project was also based on a series of predetermined mechanisms of resolving the past challenges facing the city as far as managing the city population is concerned. The management of the project was however manipulated by professional engineers that developed both the designs and the actual construction work.

The development of a city Main Street design is therefore a product of incorporation of different ideas that informs about group operations between different city departments that are responsible for ensuring that the city designs remains clearly articulated within the framework of development. There are numerous street typologies developed in Oakley. One of the design in the city include rain garden, special paving through retail strips and bike paths among others. The objective of the project was to become an economic stimulus for the downtown through conversion of the main street formerly referred, route 4 from its previously wide and vehicle dominated lane to more walkable and cloistered main street. The first vision of the drawing of the project first spurred high level of investments before and after completion in 2013. A number of previously vacant storefronts in the city are occupied with novel shops and services while the landowners of adjacent properties have started to reconstruct their unique storefronts as a mechanism of attracting new tenants. In this regard, the project is characterized with high capacity to attract new developments across the city and beyond both in the short-run and in the long-run.

The development of the project was first manifested through a detailed tree survey that preceded preparation of drawings of a group of six new soundwalls alongside 1-580 of the cities of San Leandro and Oakland. The survey comprised of 297 trees on either sides created in a simple fashion with clear graphics demonstrating the exact locations, sizes and species of every tree. The planning and design team also determined the trees that would be leveraged by proposed development and recommended retrieval, protection or pruning. Another element that was considered was the mitigation requirements anchored on the number of trees that would be deduced and recommended for the best replacements since majority of existing trees were noted to be undesirable and invasive species.

The city planning and design segments must also consider the prospects of risk management in case of future natural and manmade risks. The financial sector in particular is prone to turbulence which has a dire impact on the performance of a city in the long-run. There have been recent events that suggest that people often experience a period of rising ‘turbulence. For instance, the prolonged impact of the tsunami; 2004 in South-east Asian scenario and the Asian Financial Crisis incidence among others forms special cases of causative agents of uncertainties especially by virtue of its impact on the business activities. As a result, there are a number of organizations which are inquiring for the reason why such crises go undetected early enough through their particular risk management systems and personnel. One of the main reasons behind the failure for early detection is that the world has become considerably complex an aspect that leads to low predictability of the factors surrounding the natural happenings in particular as well as other artificial aspects.

In addition, the contemporary systems of risk management among other measures that have been developed towards predicting future aspects are mainly based on linear relationships which are deduced from past experiences. Consequently, this leads to failure of the mechanism in taking into account the present behavioral limitations which attempting to handle probabilities as well as the features pertaining to complex non-linear systems which may not always have definite causes. In this regard, organizations need to consider new methods of predicting the global happening especially on matter affecting organizational performances as opposed to the traditional ‘rational man’ approach. This paper seeks to provide a problem solving scenario using a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis. The multi-criteria analysis is mainly carried out in order to establish a comparative assessment based on two distinct objects or even heterogeneous measures. The determination of the capacity of the city to withstand financial turbulence is anchored on the possibility of new found strategies among the city planning departments which are uniquely positioned to tackle current and future city challenges besides maximizing the returns on investments for the city investors.

Technological development is also a major advance in enhancing city development and management prospects. In New York, city development has been manifested in careful designs of technological embodiment for enhanced service delivery both within the school and business sectors within the context of the city. New technologies have been a central pillar in the procurement of modern business supplies. Governments have been on the forefront in leveraging the purchasing power of the consumers through influence on prices of consumables. Change is occurring in three different phases namely: Internet marketing to expand markets; use of electronic communication to enhance efficiency and group procurement for effecting negotiation to leverage prices. The adoption of new procurement approaches in schools is very important due to a number of reasons. For instance, school districts are attributable to robust expenditures on non-personnel items. Besides, the new procurement strategies also assist governments take advantage of new procurement competencies that were previously possible for large organizations only. This article therefore creates a framework based on the study of the Case of New York State school districts. There has been a major reform that has taken place in the procurement practices characterized with the adoption of modern techniques of procurements thus, showing a major shift from traditional procurement.

Government procurement is however manipulated by strong local and state legislations. The local government procurement systems are however aimed at realizing the following achievements; encourage free competition for local vendors, realizing best price offers and preventing incidences of corrupt offer or favors on the suppliers decided upon. Indeed, the traditional procurement system is mainly centered on competition. Nevertheless, the bidding may not be competitive as required if there are limited number of vendors. Organizations that offer central form of governance in their practices should ensure they engage in tight control over their procurement process in order to ensure that competitiveness is maintained under the traditional set up of procurements. There are numerous inefficiencies that have been established from the traditional procurements processes such as reduced accuracy. Consequently the adoption of the new procurement methodologies using the modest technologies is a major advance in the process that increases efficiency through multiple perspectives. For instance, the applications of electronic commerce, commonly called e-commerce; strategic grouping among supplies to increase the negotiation capacity and drive prices downwards and use of mutual purchases through use of credit like payments for small item purchases. Kpone city is best suited as an alternative city center to Accra and can tap huge investments coupled with esteem Main Street designs that enhance order within and beyond the city precincts. The population of Ghanaian cities has been increasing over time as shown in the table and graph below:

Population (000’ inhabitants)

The graphical representation below shows the population trend that has been taking place in Ghanaian rural and urban segments in general and Accra in particular. Kpone is a city adjacent to the country capital, Accra hence subject to similar influences as soon as it develops into a major city:

From the above graphical representation of the data, it is clear that the Ghanaian population has been on a positive trend across the entire period between 1950 and 2025. In particular, the rise in urban population in recent accounts has been very high despite Accra recording relatively low influx. However, the population growth in urban areas has experienced rapid and conspicuously large percentage of growth through history to present. Based on this trend, the population growth in the Kpone and Accra among other urban areas is likely to have an abrupt growth which demonstrates the need for effective city planning and designs to counter the foreseeable challenges that comes alongside sudden population growth such as increased waste production.

A drafted guidance was drafted in 1999 but had not been fully adopted by the New Orleans’ City Council. Subsequently, the plan must be reconsidered before adoption in order to factor in the destruction that occurred after the catastrophic incidence. These changes in the pattern of growth will immensely change the society’s lifestyle. In particular, small and micro-housing structure will be probably cleared while the building plan could be re-examined to bring down unstable structures deemed to pose significant threats to lives upon subsequent occurrence of a national disaster such as the Hurricane Katrina. Similarly, the changed pattern is also likely to displace a wide range of habitants in order to pave way for the water runways to avoid recurrent flooding events while schools and other public structures are deemed for relocation of elevated structures in a bid to repair damaged housing and other infrastructures in the streets. Basically, the growth of this city occurred to the western side upriver alongside the crescent that had been defined by the natural levees drawn from the French Quarters. Settlements thereon were therefore free from flooding with protection by either Mississippi River or the Lake Pontchartrain. Its northward growth began when canals were constructed into the cypress swamps after draining the land. This followed the development of interstate 10 along eastern stretch of Lake Pontchartrain. The city is currently placed about 10 feet below sea level with existing complex systems of both Canals and levees to clear storm water from low-lying regions.