Planners and architects work hard in growing cities to try and make things seem like they aren’t. Again and again, the idea is to package long, squat structures so they look like several separate buildings.

A fast-changing slice of Oakland shows the easiest solution of all. Cut big pieces of land into small ones, then see what happens.

That’s what happened near the end of Piedmont Avenue, at the end of a popular retail strip. At least five projects are filling in 16 parcels that once had a single owner, and the jostle is downright refreshing.

Compatible diversity, as it were.

The show begins on the 4400 block of Piedmont, where Oakland’s most pedestrian-friendly commercial strip — caloric as well, given that fabled Fenton’s Creamery is one of its draws — until now has petered out. There’s a tiki bar on the downtown end, then not much until Julia Morgan’s Chapel of the Chimes and another landmark, the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Mountain View Cemetery.

Last year, though, a pair of three-story residential projects opened side by side. Piedmont Walk is an energetic procession of black and white cubes atop ground-floor lofts. Casa Isabella is a more conventional set of 10 apartments with a wannabe Tuscan air. Still to come is the Amador, a 24-apartment complex opening this fall that in renderings has the glassy horizontality of mid-20th century Los Angeles.

And if you’re the kind of person who sees all attached units as alike, never fear: One block uphill on Howe Street there’s a batch of 10 single-family homes, a development called Oakmont. Each is distinct, bearing the name of an older East Bay community of note, such as Elmwood or Kensington.

“We just want to build beautiful houses, detail them appropriately, and make them feel like they belong in the neighborhood,” said developer Tom Anthony, who has finished four and will roll out the rest this summer.

The structures are designed by John Newton. Anthony and interior designer Allison Hatcher then figure out theme-appropriate interior touches, such as the Craftsman tile fireplace for the Elmwood.

“We search our memory banks and discuss what goes with these types of houses,” said Anthony, who’s also a longtime East Bay real estate broker. Not that there aren’t contemporary features, such as electric chargers in the garages. There’s also not much green space — Anthony was able to turn the five larger parcels into 10 smaller ones, which Oakland allows in residential districts, and then squeezed in steep houses that average 2,500 square feet.

Anthony was the first buyer of the parcels in the unusual sale, which involves land that the owners of Chapel of the Chimes had purchased decades earlier. One held a headstone shop, another a motorcycle club for police officers. The rest were dotted mostly with small houses rented out as apartments, often to workers at the cemetery or the chapel.

With time, the chapel was purchased by a national operator. In 2010 the properties were part of a larger corporate transaction, and in 2011 they were put on the market.

Not great timing, given the recession.

It was 2014 before Anthony bought his batch. By then the local economy was in high gear, and the Piedmont Avenue parcels soon changed hands as well.

If this swatch of Oakland had a higher visibility, a single developer might have swooped in to buy the entire package, which covered several acres. Another city might have stepped in and reviewed the projects as a group, with careful calibration from lot to lot.

Instead, each proceeded on its own, reviewed by whoever was assigned the case file. Every project fits within the basic zoning envelope. That’s why the three Piedmont projects are all the exact same height.

I’ll let you choose favorites. For me, the unapologetic punch of Piedmont Walk is a knockout. The forms are simple but they’re delivered with conviction rather than repetition. And the closer you look the better it gets, with such touches as the outdoor staircases on the 21st century triple-deckers, with a black steel structure and perforated railings that together make industrial chic look almost suave.

“The developers understood the value of putting money into places where you get some mileage,” said architect Matt Baran, whose Baran Studio Architecture did Piedmont Walk for Bitzer Banker Development. “We wanted an underlying order, so that the individual units still cohered as a single project. We also wanted to enliven what otherwise would have felt stiff.”

The Amador also has potential while taking a more streamlined approach, open and sleek.

“We have a pretty clean-line aesthetic,” said Hulett Jones of Jones Haydu, a San Francisco firm that has never done something this large. “The goal was to have a quiet facade and open up the ground floor for a really good retail space” — a smart move given the street life a few blocks down.

Even the neighbors generate foot traffic. Chapel of the Chimes hosts weekend jazz concerts and other events. Mountain View Cemetery attracts neighbors who enjoy the soft green landscape.

“No one in the neighborhood looks at the cemetery as a cemetery,” Jones has found. “They look at it as a park.”

Are the architects comfortable with arguably discordant camaraderie? You bet.

“I’m all for architectural diversity,” said Jones, whose client was Presidio Bay Ventures. “When an entire block changes, you always hold your breath. But the way things happened here was an organic process — the way that cities should grow.”

In an ideal world, I’d have loved to see Oakland choreograph things so that there would now be a mid-block pedestrian stairway from Piedmont to Howe, as in the Bay Area’s more established hilly hoods. I also know cities will never mandate that large parcels be chopped into snug pieces.

But Jones is right. What has emerged is a 21st century version of the puzzle-piece development that once was the norm. It deserves to be celebrated.

And if it spawns a few modest imitations elsewhere, all the better.

Place is a weekly column by John King, The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron