City course · 10 lessons
San Francisco, Block by Block
A layered history of the city from Yelamu homelands to the tech era, told through shorelines, streets, migration, disaster, exclusion and resistance.
By the end, you will be able to read an ordinary San Francisco block as evidence: whose land it was, what was built or erased, and which movements made the city possible.
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Course index
The lessons
01—10
- 01Before San FranciscoBegin with Yelamu homelands and living Ohlone communities—not with an empty peninsula waiting for a city.14 min
- 02Yerba Buena to Gold RushA cove-side settlement became an American boomtown through conquest, migration and an economy aimed at the mines.13 min
- 03A City Built From SandDunes, filled coves, cable traction and immigrant neighborhoods made the late nineteenth-century city—and exposed who paid its costs.15 min
- 041906: Earthquake, Fire, ChoiceThe disaster was geological; its scale and aftermath were shaped by construction, water, firefighting and political decisions.16 min · 2 films
- 05The Reinvented CityRebuilding and the 1915 exposition sold San Francisco as orderly, imperial and modern—while concealing conflict behind the façade.12 min
- 06Gatekeeping the PacificChinese Exclusion and Angel Island turned the Bay’s celebrated gateway into a machinery of detention and interrogation.15 min · audio
- 07The War CityMilitary expansion, shipyards, incarceration and migration remade the entire Bay—and filled San Francisco neighborhoods with new claims to belonging.16 min · oral history
- 08A City of RevoltPoetry, music, sexuality and neighborhood organizing turned San Francisco into a stage for dissent—and dissent into a marketable image.15 min
- 09Redevelopment and ResistanceFillmore clearance, the International Hotel and Mission murals show planning as a contest over who gets to remain visible and housed.16 min
- 10Boomtown, AgainDot-com wealth, converted industrial land, housing scarcity and climate risk repeat old arguments in new vocabulary.14 min