BERKELEY, California — The revolution is now a fortified construction site.
Just blocks from UC Berkeley, steel boxes and concertina wire ring the storied People’s Park. Behind them: the skeletal frame of a student dormitory, rising where protesters once clashed in one of the nation’s most famously progressive cities.
Neighbors and activists fought the campus housing complex at every turn — including through a novel legal argument: Excessive noise from its boisterous young tenants should be considered an environmental impact under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.
The project took six years to break ground — and became a symbol of how state legislation Ronald Reagan signed in 1970 to protect air and water and check rampant development was being used to block desperately needed new homes. It also helped hasten the law’s slide — from a pillar of California’s climate leadership to a cautionary tale about the ruling party’s inability to tackle a perpetual housing shortage — that culminated last month in a major rollback.
