Americana
Dreams, Dust, and Birds
Places Journal
Owens Lake was drained dry by the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Today the lakebed is a howling wasteland of toxic dust. Can the city fix the problem it made?
Landscape Migration
Places Journal
We are now well into a geologic era — the Anthropocene — characterized by the acceleration of environmental change. This is the landscape medium in which we design.
Watermark: Along the California Aqueduct
Places Journal
The extraordinary achievement of modern California — the transformation of a semi-arid region into an abundant and prosperous place — has produced a wicked tangle of problems.
Banham’s America
Places Journal
The American journeys of Reyner Banham fall in the lively tradition of European travelers who tell us Americans something important about ourselves.
A Home Before the End of the World
Places Journal
What does it mean when a famous novelist makes careless errors in his depiction of nature? Is our ignorance of natural ecosystems making it easier for us to destroy them?
The Wisconsin Experiment
Places Journal
In the Trump era, we can learn from Indigenous leaders who refuse to separate science from culture and politics.
Motor City Breakdown
Places Journal
A sweeping review of Detroit’s portrayal in recent books and films.
What You Don’t See
Places Journal
Follow the supply chains of architecture and you’ll find not just product manufacturers but also environmental polluters and secretive networks of political influence.
Poems as Maps: An Introduction
Places Journal
We use maps to find our way in the world, to locate ourselves in relation to others, to measure distance and record change.
The Big Data of Ice, Rocks, Soils, and Sediments
Places Journal
Inside the material archives of climate science, which get wilder and dirtier the deeper you go.
The Problem with Solutions
Places Journal
We need to engage troubled landscapes without presuming to fix them. Notes toward a history of non-solutionist design.
The Dog Barks
Places Journal
Two new books advance arguments against capitalism and its discontents — especially against the technological despotism of the internet, and the scientific despoliation of earth.
Open and Shut
Places Journal
Two recent books offer compelling perspectives on the debate between private interest and public good. They also raise provocative questions about an activist agenda for the design disciplines.