Through history, Soundview Park has been the place of dispute between Con Edison and the communities considering displacement, environmental violence, health issues, and ecosystem degradation. These disputes continue today, Manhattan has an abundant supply of steam, while in the Bronx, it is being replaced with fracked gas. How can the histories of environmental injustice be reversed?
We will challenge the rhetorics of decarbonization by reversing the tendency to fracking, requiring Con-Ed to continue using steam and bring it free to the neighborhood as an environmental reparation to prevent energy injustice. Additionally, we will anticipate climate change by creating new ecologies with steam.
The pipelines are always underground and unseen, we will bring them overground. The park will be transformed into Steamview Park, a steam-breathing machine. Communities and environmental advocacy groups, who have always collaborated to revitalize the park, will help us make the pipes by hand.
Fifty years from now, the steam habitat will destroy its own infrastructure. As climate change eventually catches up, the pipes will no longer be needed. The system will remain as a legacy of a materiality that is dying, and it will serve as a memory of the histories of environmental injustice at Soundview Park.
