When the former Nimitz corridor was redesigned as open urban plazas and green infrastructure, vehicle exclusion was not built into the original access framework. The assumption, city planners have acknowledged, was that spaces with no prior pedestrian presence would not require dedicated anti-vehicle barriers. The crowd-strike incident has rendered that assumption untenable. The tension now facing Oakland is architectural and political: protective infrastructure capable of preventing vehicle intrusion typically takes forms, bollards and concrete barriers, that conflict with the open waterfront aesthetic these corridors were designed to embody. How the city resolves that tension will likely become a reference point for other municipalities managing similar post-freeway transformations.