Fred DeJarlais is a retired urban planner, past president of the California Map Society, and current publisher of their cartographic journal, Calafia. As a planner, he worked on the Mission Bay Project in San Francisco from 1982 to 2000. 

You can access a more comprehensive bio by clicking the title of the exhibit.

I'd like to introduce you to Dogpatch, the sea is rising: 6 feet by Bay Area artist Linda Gass. 

Her art tackles the mounting climate, land, and water use issues facing our society. 

Linda made this metal-print panel in 2019 as the last in a three-part series of maps of eastern San Francisco, pictured below in the text.

Image source: https://www.lindagass.com/ClimateChange/Dogpatch.html. 

The three Dogpatch maps show the area in 3 stages: its 2019 condition; when the sea rises 3 feet; and when the sea rises 6 feet. We witness a progression from today's world to one where water has taken control.

At high predicted rates of carbon emissions, we'll reach the world of this final map by about 2100. 

Image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 6 feet of average sea level rise by 2100 is on the higher end of an NOAA task force's predictions, but it has not been ruled out. Note as well that mean sea levels will rise faster in some areas (such as the western Gulf of Mexico) than others.

The map itself comes from a silk quilt. These wave patterns in the water are stitches, which Linda traces into the fabric with a sewing machine. 

You can see a time-lapse of Linda Gass' production process at the link shown: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sj4sE0VIDYipn0C3khcvvJeOxdnGIcrw/view?usp=sharing. 

She then photographs the quilt in high resolution and prints the image onto a metal plate, creating a long-lasting, archival-quality picture.

The name Dogpatch comes from the formerly industrial Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, once home to iron and steel foundries and shipworks and now an evolving residential area. 

Image from http://www.pier70sf.org/dogpatch/dogpatch_history.htm. 

At 6 feet of sea level rise, parts of Dogpatch, including large areas of the Mission Bay Project, will go underwater, and the rest is under threat. 

This flooded oblong shape is the Chase Center, home of the Warriors. It's in the area of the Mission Bay Project, which I worked on for 19 years between 1982 and 2000. 

I'm dismayed that this project is now at great risk.

When we developed the minimum site elevation for this project in the '80s, we assumed that sea levels would rise at the same pace as before--two-fifths of a foot in 80 years. Our biggest concern was overland storm flows
from the large drainage basin to the west, not from sea level rise.

About 50% of the Mission Bay Project is vulnerable to sea level rise.

Buildings in Mission Bay are supported by piles, but the area rests atop 20-150 feet of compressible Bay Mud, as is most of downtown San Francisco. 

Assuming that the engineers are doing their jobs right, the buildings will remain stable, but the surrounding streets, landscaped areas, and utilities will be subject to sinking.

Over time, this will worsen the effects of sea level rise, make building access more difficult, and increase the rate at which utilities break down.

I would like to end with a request: Pay attention to science. 

Some cities are continuing on their merry way. Boston is making the same decisions as San Francisco in the 1980s, putting billions into a bayside development put in jeopardy by sea level rise. 

But this is an issue that the communities along San Francisco Bay's shoreline cannot ignore. 

Areas like Foster City, Alameda, and all the communities along the west coastline of the Bay are probably in trouble. San Jose is vulnerable. 

All of the Bayside cities are faced with tremendous costs to protect themselves as the sea rises.

You can see more of Linda Gass' work at https://www.lindagass.com/index.html.

Her work is the cover art for the very first journal issue of Calafia, and we have made the articles below freely accessible to the public:

• Alice Engelmore, "A Watershed Moment: The Art of Linda Gass," Kalafia 2022 no. 2: 28-31. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a-xQKkKuKYmNSYXr3dtLwzu4xMwYUs1p/view?usp=sharing.
• "Spring 2017 Meeting," Kalafia 2017 no. 2: 16-18. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_EFryEThWYgmwrxWU5QrRJalLr3uo2Bw/view?usp=sharing.

Created and presented by Fred DeJarlais. 

Scripted and edited by Andrew Gu, 2024 Pixeum Summer Intern.

Image source: "Dogpatch, the sea is rising, 6 feet” by Linda Gass. Copyright ©2019. Photograph by Don Tuttle.