A New Campus in the City: Place-Making in South Lake Union

Abstract

South Lake Union is experiencing a drastic transformation of its landscape and population since the city of Seattle designated it as a key urban center in 2004. An industrial district and low-income neighborhood described as a “ghost town” in the late 1990s, it is now a proclaimed center of innovation and thriving campus for high-tech and biotech companies. In this project, I explore the place-making practices of the professionals who commute to South Lake Union to work for these global corporations. My focus on their day-to-day activities in public space and on their discourses about South Lake Union helps me explore the ways in which they shape the neighborhood both materially and symbolically, as well as the ways in which these place-making practices shape their collective identity. Through semi-structured interviews and a landscape analysis, I link their construction of South Lake Union as a place dedicated to their work and consumption, and their normalization of whiteness and middle-classness, to broader forces that reproduce and sustain racial capitalism. This work helps me reflect on the possibilities and limitations of studying a socially and numerically dominant group to expose and help disrupt their hegemonic practices.