Reading the “White Spatial Imaginary” in the Redevelopment of Yesler Terrace

Abstract

This thesis considers the ways built environment practitioners, namely urban planners, architectural designers, and real estate developers, imagine the spaces they plan, design, and develop. In particular, it examines the built and social consequences of said imaginings through a case study of the redevelopment of Seattle’s Yesler Terrace. Its policies and buildings are very much a discourse, the rhetorical meaning of which is made apparent through an against the grain reading of the various documents involved in their production. Using a critical discourse analysis, the thesis follows George Lipsitz (2007, 2011) and Anna Livia Brand (2018) to argue that Yesler is a built expression of the “white spatial imaginary” through the ways its documentation selectively writes history, reproduces commercialized multiculturalism and environmentalism, and forms identities in and out of place. In this way, the thesis expands the notion of the white spatial imaginary into other parts of the built environment using evidence from an overlooked archive.