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, 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.

The Board of Directors
Places Journal

  • Aarhus School of Architecture
  • The Bartlett, University College London
  • The Urban Studies Program at Brown University
  • Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
  • Georgia Tech, College of Design
  • MIT School of Architecture + Planning
  • Faculty of Architecture and Design, NTNU
  • Oslo School of Architecture and Design
  • Penn State, Stuckeman School
  • Pratt Institute, School of Architecture
  • School of Architecture, Princeton University
  • Southern California Institute of Architecture
  • Tulane School of Architecture
  • 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 Hong Kong, Faculty of 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 Southern California, School of Architecture
  • University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
  • UT Austin School of Architecture
  • University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
  • University of Virginia, School of Architecture
  • Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies
  • Washington University in St. Louis, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
  • Yale University, School of Architecture