This image is a Pasadena City Council approved visualization of the proposed 550-unit development. The image, created by Steinberg Hart, is oriented northward toward the San Gabriel mountains and presents the development as an idyllic green space for young families, and elderly couples.
Though the public debate has focused on this site as responding to the need for affordable housing in the region, in this depiction the imagined community is presented as a fantasy leisure culture.
In addition, the development is seen from an interior gaze that obscures its place within the wider community bounded by high volume traffic. For instance, the perspective taken in this drawing is only possible from a stance next to the 210 Freeway which abuts the property and can be seen in Image 2.
Not surprisingly, the history of this site as a Naval Research facility has no place in the imagined future offered by developers and approved by the City Council. Yet, it is what is not-depicted here, especially the widely used neurotoxic chemicals RDX and TNT, that concern community activists and threaten this peaceful future.
What I am struck by, is that the current stakes in this contentious debate focus simply on testing for site carcinogens, not on the implications of this development on public health. Even from an exclusively economistic perspective, this stance seems deeply short-sighted.
This image is a Pasadena City Council approved visualization of the proposed 550-unit development. The image, created by Steinberg Hart, is oriented northward toward the San Gabriel mountains and presents the development as an idyllic green space for young families, and elderly couples.
Though the public debate has focused on this site as responding to the need for affordable housing in the region, in this depiction the imagined community is presented as a fantasy leisure culture.
In addition, the development is seen from an interior gaze that obscures its place within the wider community bounded by high volume traffic. For instance, the perspective taken in this drawing is only possible from a stance next to the 210 Freeway which abuts the property and can be seen in Image 2.
Not surprisingly, the history of this site as a Naval Research facility has no place in the imagined future offered by developers and approved by the City Council. Yet, it is what is not-depicted here, especially the widely used neurotoxic chemicals RDX and TNT, that concern community activists and threaten this peaceful future.
What I am struck by, is that the current stakes in this contentious debate focus simply on testing for site carcinogens, not on the implications of this development on public health. Even from an exclusively economistic perspective, this stance seems deeply short-sighted.
This visualization is part of the Visualizing Toxic Places Design Project 2020 and Place as Palimpsest photo essay.