"Zero Streets: West Oakland Truck Stop and Mobile Research Lab The Zero Street sits in the space under the freeway. This space is dead, and has been for some time. Standing in the chasm that is the onramp, or beneath the towering junction, I am amazed by cavernous gashes and the soaring heights, the cathedral like space. I am awed by the constant rattle of commuter traffic and the power of trucks hauling one tremendous cargo load after another. And I am anxious because there is no one there, only a lone, rusted railroad track leading off into the distance. I look to the ground and I see the oil that stains the asphalt, and I know it runs deep. I know the histories of the factories and plants that have been abandoned or torn down, and those that still litter the landscape, permeating and mingling with the small Victorian relics. The space I stand in is loud with the blare of passing traffic, trucks and trains, layered in the grit of industrial and automotive particulate pollution, and its air choked with dangerous gasses, but it is beautiful. And its time has come.
Zero Streets are conditions that represent the temporal and physical discontinuity of the urban fabric. They are created as infrastructure traverses the urban plane, creating a literal cut and erasing life as it passes through. Any street or adjoining condition that stands in the way will ultimately die into the new structure; they are simply built over. Zero Streets are a numeric memory of the remainder. They can be identified by GIS software searching for properties that have been deleted from public databases. Widths, lengths, sidewalks, and addresses appear as zeroes, representing erasure."
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