Wedged between Oakland and Berkeley, little Emeryville is situated entirely on the flats where Temescal Creek, mostly buried, meets the Bay. Its eastern tip is about 55 feet above sea level; its native material has nothing in it bigger than a pebble.
Pink, artificial fill; Qhb, basin deposits (mostly clay); Qhl, levee deposits (mostly silt); Qhaf, alluvium (mostly sand)
The city perforce is all about the human presence; every square meter is under control. Besides the railroad and the freeway, buildings dominate the views along its streets: from east to west they’re mixed bungalows and Victorians, antique warehouse spaces and glassy corporate blocks.
Then offshore there’s the Peninsula, built from nothing in the 1960s. Here, at its western end, is the only place left to see what used to dominate every view in Emeryville: a wide coastal plain, a broad bay, a grand row of high hills, a wraparound sky.
Doyle Hollis Park is a clean young jewel in mainland Emeryville’s game-board terrain. Stretching between the Doyle Street bikeway and the Hollis Street bus corridor, it offers a bit of nature in a city starved for green space while making the most of a site without topography.
Its most basic amenity is a wide sky and, thanks to its east-west length, a view of the high hills. The hardscape in the foreground shows a willingness to play the city’s planar grid against curving forms both geometrical and natural.
Playgrounds are placed at both ends of the lawn, a conventional one toward the hills and an artistic one toward the Bay. Here a pavement of irregular dark granite tiles sets off fancifully sculpted boulders with most of their natural dressing left intact. Low concrete benches form an amphitheater facing the arrangement.
Scattered through the grounds are more stream-worn boulders from Sierra riverbeds. Some are cleverly cut, but most are lusciously whole.
Self-contained and indestructible, they also add textures and patinas no human artist can match.
Oakland Geology 
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