Our Commitment to Public Scholarship

With an engaged and extensive international readership, Places is widely recognized as an essential and trusted resource on the future of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Fully digital since 2009, and free to all, without paywall or paid subscription, the journal has established itself as an unusual if not unique platform for rigorous and accessible study of the built environment, fostering high visibility and sustained impact for exceptional writing in the field.

A cornerstone of our commitment to this exchange is an intensive and highly selective editorial process. Both established and emerging writers working within the academy, in journalism, and in the design professions develop articles through in-depth dialogue with Places editors — who are themselves active as writers, critics, and educators. Supported by a level of editorial attention that has become all too rare in publishing, contributors pursue original research and trans-disciplinary analysis, making Places a home for long-form essays, innovative reporting, archival rediscoveries, and vivid storytelling.

In 2017, we unanimously moved to end the journal’s peer-review track in order to clarify and further strengthen our mission of public scholarship. The profound challenges of our time — structural racism, economic inequality, the erosion of democracy, climate crisis, rapid technological change — demand that serious design thinking and practice move from the margins to the center of cultural discussion.

Places will always be dedicated to that goal.

Board of Directors
Academic Partner Council
Places Journal

  • Aarhus School of Architecture
  • Brown University Urban Studies Program
  • Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design
  • The City College of New York, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture
  • Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
  • Diné College
  • Florida A&M University School of Architecture and Engineering Technology
  • Georgia Tech, College of Design
  • Howard University, Department of Architecture
  • Iowa State University College of Design
  • MIT School of Architecture + Planning
  • Monash University, Department of Architecture
  • Morgan State University School of Architecture and Planning
  • National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture
  • Penn State, Stuckeman School
  • Pratt Institute, School of Architecture
  • School of Architecture, Princeton University
  • Southern California Institute of Architecture
  • Tulane School of Architecture
  • Tuskegee University Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science
  • University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
  • University of California-Berkeley, College of Environmental Design
  • University College Dublin, School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy
  • University of Houston, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, School of Architecture and Department of Landscape Architecture
  • Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg
  • University of Miami School of Architecture
  • University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
  • University of Minnesota, School of Architecture
  • School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico
  • University of Oregon, College of Design
  • University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
  • University of Puerto Rico School of Architecture
  • University of Southern California, School of Architecture
  • UT Austin School of Architecture
  • University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
  • University of Virginia, School of Architecture
  • University of Washington College of Built Environments
  • Virginia Tech, College of Architecture, Arts and Design
  • Washington University in St. Louis, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
  • Wellington School of Architecture – Te Kura Waihanga
  • Yale University, School of Architecture