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The juxtaposed images don't immediately render themselves legible as "toxic" or "ruined," but I think this is part of the point. The accompanying text give the deeper history behind the two images and what the renovated Union Station has replaced. The clean architectural lines and bright colors of the new building hide the more sordid history of displacment and disposession behind the urban renewal project. These juxtaposed images thus ask the view to question what kinds of political and social maneuvers needed to happen Chinatown to transition into a different kind of space. 

This image, and the others you have put together in this collapse-of-time model, bring me back to Foucault's dislike of the term "history". These images, by revealing what has been obfuscated by rigged narratives, and racist power pulpits, instead ethnographically point to the genealogical work of disarticulating particular archives, with their particular epistemological pedigrees.

There is a visually easy way of seeing regeneration "happen" through these images. Processes of exclusion, expulsion, and eviction are visualized through the juxtaposed construction. The way in which infrastructure allows for a restructuring of space is key in this image. The two arches (one in each picture) give me a sense of attempted continuity. The removal of any Chinese architectural legacy from the new station brutally deletes history.

I appreciate your collapsing of time to illustrate what changes, and what stays when talking about housing in particular. For instance, I could hear an argument for attuning to humanity itself when considering discourse surrounding homelessness. However, with this image, you focus not only the juxtaposition of time, but also the infrastructural presence of homeless communities, not through human bodies, but through the tents that house them. 

This contiguous Brunswig building image fascinating for the commentary on the passage of time, how the building still stands. I appreciate the care in juxtaposing these images so that the building maintains its shape across the border of the separate photographs. What is not yet clear to me - yet - in this wonderful photo essay, is just what the figure of toxicity is, or, what the figures of toxicity are.

This image immediately brings to mind news stories I read in the months leading up to 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Many athletes chose to not particpate because of the poor air quality, for fear that it would case irreparable harm to their health. This image provides a shockingly relevant visual representation of these concerns. 

Having also chosen such a structure that juxtaposes two images of the same space at different times, I think it provides a clear way of articulating change over time that many visuals cannot. Even charts and data sets lose the human element in their attempts to show temporal scales. 

I think it's interesting that this image provides different understandings and scales of toxicity. In the image of the "clear day" in Beijing, there is still a layer of smog floating above the city. How does this complicate transnational, transcultural, and/or global standards of toxicity? 

At first, I was not totally sure that the image was a "before and after." I read it as a window covering for a second, but I think that the title makes it clear and the image is actually equally effective either way. The point from which the man stands seems really important, as if to highlight our individual perspective and to spotlight individual vantage points and the various lenses that we see things through, including biases and ignorances around contamination and toxicity. The void that the polluted air segment creates in the image is almost soothing in its nothingness.

The image here, along with your text frame-up a powerful sentiment that I often feel gets lost in the discursive gymnastics over gentrification, or pretty much most facets of Late Industrial Capitalism as we understand them now. Urban renewal is an example of the affordances neoliberal machinists grant educated progressives as they demand to live their lives under certain moral parameters.