Berkeley (/ˈbɜrkliː/ burk-lee) is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County,California which is named after the eighteenth-century bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and unincorporated community of Kensingtonto the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. Its population at the 2010 census was determined to be 112,580. It is one of the most politically liberal cities in the United States.
Berkeley is the site of the oldest campus in the University of California system – the University of California, Berkeley – and of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that the university manages and operates. It is also home to the Graduate Theological Union.
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Campus Main article: Campus of the University of California, Berkeley
The Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232 acres (499 ha), though the "central campus" occupies only the low-lying western 178 acres (72 ha) of this area. Of the remaining acres, approximately 200 acres (81 ha) are occupied by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; other facilities above the main campus include the Lawrence Hall of Science and several research units, notably the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an undeveloped 800-acre (320 ha) ecological preserve, the University of California Botanical Garden and a recreation center in Strawberry Canyon. Portions of the mostly undeveloped, eastern area of the campus are actually within the City of Oakland; these portions extend from the Claremont Resort north through the Panoramic Hillneighborhood to Tilden Park.[85]
To the west of the central campus is the downtown business district of Berkeley; to the northwest is the neighborhood of North Berkeley, including the so-called Gourmet Ghetto, a commercial district known for high quality dining due to the presence of such world-renowned restaurants as Chez Panisse. Immediately to the north is a quiet residential neighborhood known as Northside with a large graduate student population;[86] situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley Hills. Immediately southeast of campus lies fraternity row, and beyond that the Clark Kerr Campus and an upscale residential area named Claremont. The area south of the university includes student housing and Telegraph Avenue, one of Berkeley's main shopping districts with stores, street vendors and restaurants catering to college students and tourists. In addition, the University also owns land to the northwest of the main campus, a 90-acre (36 ha) married student housing complex in the nearby town of Albany ("Albany Village" and the "Gill Tract"), and a field research station several miles to the north in Richmond, California.
Outside of the Bay Area, the University owns various research laboratories and research forests in both northern and southern Sierra Nevada.
Architecture

South Hall (1873), one of the two original buildings of the University of California, still stands on the Berkeley campus
What is considered the historic campus today was the result of the 1898 "International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California," funded by William Randolph Hearst's mother and initially held in the Belgian city of Antwerp; eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco in 1899.[87] The winner was Frenchman Émile Bénard, however he refused to personally supervise the implementation of his plan and the task was subsequently given to architecture professor John Galen Howard. Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for the campus up until its expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. The structures forming the “classical core” of the campus were built in the Beaux-Arts Classical style, and include Hearst Greek Theatre, Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Memorial Library, California Hall, Wheeler Hall, (Old) Le Conte Hall, Gilman Hall, Haviland Hall, Wellman Hall,Sather Gate, and the 307-foot (94 m) Sather Tower (nicknamed "the Campanile" after its architectural inspiration, St Mark's Campanilein Venice). Buildings he regarded as temporary, nonacademic, or not particularly "serious" were designed in shingle or Collegiate Gothic styles; examples of these are North Gate Hall, Dwinelle Annex, and Stephens Hall. Many of Howard's designs are recognizedCalifornia Historical Landmarks[88] and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built in 1873 in a Victorian Second-Empire-style, South Hall is the oldest university building in California. It, and the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Piedmont Avenueeast of the main campus, are the only remnants from the original University of California before John Galen Howard's buildings were constructed. Other architects whose work can be found in the campus and surrounding area are Bernard Maybeck[89] (best known for the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco), Maybeck's student Julia Morgan(Hearst Women's Gymnasium), Charles Willard Moore (Haas School of Business) and Joseph Esherick (Wurster Hall).
Natural features

The south fork of Strawberry Creek, as seen between Dwinelle Hall and Lower Sproul Plaza.
Flowing into the main campus are two branches of Strawberry Creek. The south fork enters a culvert upstream of the recreational complex at the mouth of Strawberry Canyon and passes beneath California Memorial Stadium before appearing again in Faculty Glade. It then runs through the center of the campus before disappearing underground at the west end of campus. The north fork appears just east ofUniversity House and runs through the glade north of the Valley Life Sciences Building, the original site of the Campus Arboretum.
Trees in the area date from the founding of the University in the 1870s. The campus, itself, contains numerous wooded areas; including:Founders' Rock, Faculty Glade, Grinnell Natural Area, and the Eucalyptus Grove, which is both the tallest stand of such trees in the world and the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America.[90]
The campus sits on the Hayward Fault, which runs directly through California Memorial Stadium.[91] There is ongoing construction to retrofit the stadium. The "treesit" protest revolved around the controversy of clearing away trees by the stadium to build the new Student Athlete High Performance Center. As the stadium sits directly on the fault, this raised campus concerns of the safety of student athletes in the event of an earthquake as they train in facilities under the stadium stands.[92]
Environmental record[edit]
Two committees and the Office of Sustainability at UC Berkeley work formally to implement sustainability initiatives on campus. The university encourages green purchasing when possible including installing energy-efficient technologies around campus such as steam trap systems and economizers.[93] UC Berkeley has a green building policy. Two buildings on campus are LEED certified, and six others meet LEED standards. Multiple building spaces have been repurposed for alternative use, and almost all waste from construction projects is diverted from landfills. Water conservation technologies have been installed across campus, and the university employs a variety of techniques to manage storm water.[93] UC Berkeley heats, cools, and powers its lab equipment utilizing power from an on-campus natural gas plant.[94] UC Berkeley's efforts toward sustainabilityearned the school a B on the College Sustainability Report Card; overall, the school's grades within the sections were high—it earned A's in the majority of the Report Card.