Guest Opinion | Erika Foy: The Picture on the Box

When you begin a puzzle, you don’t start with the pieces. You start with the picture on the box.

That picture doesn’t tell you where every piece belongs, but it gives each piece meaning. Without it, you’re left trying to solve one small section at a time, hoping everything eventually fits together.

For more than a decade, I’ve attended City Council meetings, Planning Commission hearings, neighborhood meetings, and community planning workshops. Like many residents, I usually arrived focused on a single issue—a development proposal, a traffic concern, homelessness, public safety, housing, or another important topic.

But over time, something changed.

I found myself paying less attention to the individual pieces and more attention to the picture that was beginning to emerge.

What kind of Pasadena were all of these decisions creating together?

That question has stayed with me because cities aren’t experienced one agenda item at a time. They’re experienced through neighborhoods that evolve over years and decades. Every decision—whether about housing, transportation, economic development, homelessness services, public facilities, parks, healthcare, historic preservation, or environmental sustainability—becomes part of a much larger story.

Some readers may say, “Isn’t that exactly what the General Plan and our Specific Plans are supposed to do?”

They’re right.

In fact, I participated in the planning process for my own neighborhood years ago. Those conversations felt different. We weren’t reacting to a proposal already before us. We were asking a much broader question: What do we want this neighborhood to become? Residents, businesses, planners, and city leaders worked together to create a shared vision before the individual projects arrived.

Looking back, I realize those planning efforts began with the picture on the box.

Today, I sometimes wonder if we’ve become so busy responding to immediate challenges and evaluating individual proposals that we’ve drifted away from that way of thinking. The picture hasn’t disappeared. Our General Plan, Specific Plans, and community vision still exist. But too often, our conversations begin with the next piece instead of returning to the picture that should guide where it belongs.

The City already evaluates whether proposals are consistent with zoning, the General Plan, and applicable Specific Plans. Those findings are an important part of good planning. But too often, the discussion feels technical rather than meaningful. We demonstrate compliance, but we don’t always communicate the vision.

Residents shouldn’t have to piece that story together on their own.

Every significant proposal should answer one simple question:

How does this decision help build the future we said we wanted for this neighborhood?

Not simply how does it comply with the plan.

How does it advance the plan?

How does it strengthen the neighborhood?

How does it fit with the surrounding housing, businesses, institutions, transportation, parks, public spaces, and other planned investments that together create the character of a place?

Those are the conversations that make planning meaningful. They connect technical analysis to the lived experience of the people who call a neighborhood home.

That isn’t a criticism of any one project or any one decision. Pasadena has faced extraordinary challenges in recent years—housing mandates, homelessness, infrastructure needs, recovery from the Eaton Fire, public safety concerns, budget pressures, and the everyday demands of governing a complex city. Those issues deserve serious attention.

But perhaps they also remind us why planning matters.

Planning isn’t simply about deciding whether a project is appropriate. It is the discipline of making sure today’s decisions strengthen tomorrow’s Pasadena.

Pasadena has no shortage of worthy goals. We care about housing, homelessness, economic development, public safety, parks, infrastructure, historic preservation, environmental sustainability, and thriving neighborhoods. Every one of those priorities matters.

The challenge isn’t choosing between them.

The challenge is ensuring they strengthen one another.

The picture on the box shouldn’t belong to one councilmember, one planner, one neighborhood, or one interest group. It should be a shared vision shaped by the people who live here, work here, invest here, and who will inherit this city long after today’s agenda is forgotten.

Residents are often invited into the conversation after a proposal has largely taken shape. By then, we’re usually discussing a single piece of the puzzle. Imagine instead beginning with the picture itself—engaging residents, businesses, institutions, property owners, and city leaders earlier, and asking not only whether a proposal is appropriate, but how it contributes to the future we have already said we want to create.

I believe Pasadena is capable of this conversation. We are a city with extraordinary neighborhoods, remarkable institutions, engaged residents, talented planners, dedicated public servants, and people who care deeply about our future.

We don’t need to invent a new philosophy.

We simply need to return to one that has served us well.

Before we decide where the next piece belongs, let’s spend a little more time looking at the picture on the box.

The picture on the box isn’t just a vision. It’s a promise—a promise that each decision will be measured not only by whether it can stand on its own, but by whether it helps create the Pasadena we have chosen to build together.

Because if we can agree on the picture, placing the pieces becomes a great deal easier.

That, to me, is what planning is for.

Erika Foy is an active Pasadena resident who resides in the Madison Heights neighborhood.