Pursuing the Technological Sublime: How the Bay Bridge Became a Megaproject

P URSUING THE T ECHNOLOGICAL S UBLIME H OW B ECAME THE A B AY B RIDGE M EGAPROJECT KAREN TRAPENBERG FRICK T he newly opened eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is a classic example of a megaproject at $6.4 billion and a textbook embodiment of what I have identified as the “six Cs” of a typical megaproject: colossal, captivating, costly, controversial, complex, and subject to issues of control. Here, I focus on how the “captivating” and “colossal” characteristics affected the bridge design process and implementation. Captivating and colossal projects engage and stimulate participation by a broad set of stakeholders and citizens, whose varied perspectives and inputs can be difficult to accommodate without controversy and conflict. Historian David Nye similarly considered these characteristics emblematic of pursuit of what he termed the technological sublime. The technological sublime inspires feelings of “awe and wonder, often tinged with an element of terror, which people have had when confronted with particular natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achieve- ments,” like the Grand Canyon, the Empire State Building, and the first transcontinental railroad. In addition to the typical wrangling between actors over specific interests, the pursuit of this feeling of the sublime explains many underlying motivations and rhetoric behind the design process for the eastern span. The period I examine for the new bridge runs from 1997 to 2005, when the major design decisions leading to the final form of the project were made. Karen Trapenberg Frick is Assistant Director of the University of California Transportation Center and Assistant A djunct Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley (kfrick@berkeley.edu). A C C E S S