My Work on California + Bay Area
I’ve been fortunate to live in different cities and countries, but the Bay Area will always be home, and I am thrilled to be back. While I will continue to write about housing and urban development more broadly, my advocacy and policy work is focused on California.
Contact me to talk about how we can work together to make California more equitable.
Complete Works
2019 The Road to Resegregation: Northern California and the Failure of Politics, University of California Press
Peer-reviewed publications
2015 Richard Walker and Alex Schafran, The Strange Case of the Bay Area, Environment and Planning A, 47(1), pp 10-29
2014 Alex Schafran. Rethinking Megaregions: Subregional Politics in a Fragmented Metropolis, Regional Studies, 48(4), pp. 587-602
2013 Alex Schafran, Oscar Sosa Lopez and June Gin. Politics and possibility in postsuburbia: Scale, social movements and the suburbanization of poverty, Environment and Planning A, 45(12) pp. 2833-2851
2012 Alex Schafran. Origins of an Urban Crisis: The Restructuring of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Geography of Foreclosure, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(2), pp 663–88, 2013 BEST ARTICLE PRIZE
2012 Alex Schafran and Jake Wegmann. Restructuring, Race and Real Estate: Changing Home Values and the New California Metropolis, 1989-2010, Urban Geography, 33(5), pp. 630-654
2009 Alex Schafran. Outside Endopolis: Notes from Contra Costa County,” Critical Planning, 16. SOJA PRIZE FOR CRITICAL THINKING IN URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH.
Book Chapters, White Papers & Reports
2013 Alex Schafran and Lisa Feldstein. “Black, Brown, White and Green: Race, Land Use and Environmental Politics in a Changing Richmond,” in Social Justice in Diverse Suburbs, ed. Christopher Neidt. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
2013 Alex Schafran. “Exurbs: The (new?) political frontier of the San Francisco Bay Area,” in Frédérick Douzet and Béatrice Giblin (eds.), Des Frontières indépassables?, Paris: Editions Armand Colin.
2010 Alex Schafran. “The Long Road from Babylon to Brentwood: Crisis and Restructuring in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Institute for the Study of Social Change Working Paper Series, University of California, Berkeley, November 2010.
2008 Alex Schafran. “Catching the Green Wave: Developing an Industrial Land Use Strategy for Richmond’s Green Economy,” Center for Community Innovation, University of California, Berkeley.
Journalism and Essays
2015 Alex Schafran. Gentrification cannot be solved without crucial, large compromise, The Daily Californian, 15 Sep. 2015
2012 Alex Schafran. The Cities of Carquinez. The Urbanist, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), San Francisco. June 2012.
2012 Alex Schafran. Urban Field Notes Case study #49: The Cities of Carquinez, The Urbanist, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), San Francisco. June 2012.
2012 Alex Schafran, Entire Bay Area must take ownership to find stadium compromises, Oakland Tribune, April 5, 2012
2011 Alex Schafran and Chris Schildt, How East Contra Costa County is Handling the Housing Crisis, Race, Poverty and the Environment, Urban Habitat, Oakland, Vol. 18, No. 2
2011 Alex Schafran. Scenes from Surrendered Homes. Places: Design Observer. July 18, 2011.
Book Reviews and Review Articles
2016 San Francisco: Politics, Intransigence and Profiteering in Northern California, introduction to the virtual special issue on San Francisco, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (issue editor)
Cities of Carquinez
It can be lonely work advocating for eastern Contra Costa and southern Solano county to be included in the Bay Area’s imagination of itself. SPUR was kind enough to give me the lion’s share of an issue of the Urbanist in 2012 to make this case. There are three articles, including one by the great…
The Road to Resegregation on KQED’s Forum
I was honored to spend an hour talking with Michael Krasny about my 2019 book, The Road to Resegregation. Listen to our conversation on KQED’s Forum.
Alex Schafran 