With an engaged and extensive international readership, Places Journal is widely recognized as an essential and trusted resource on the future of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Our mission is to harness the moral and investigative power of public scholarship to promote equitable cities and resilient landscapes.
Founded at MIT and Berkeley in 1983, Places has deep associations with leading design faculties around the world, and for more than a decade we have been supported by the collective financial contributions of our Academic Partners. This innovative funding model enables us to remain free of advertising and free of charge, and to produce independent scholarship that bridges from the academy to the profession to the public.
Cities that are growing and cities that are shrinking, environmental health and social equity, climate change, resource scarcity, technological innovation — all demand that we rethink how we plan, design, construct, and maintain the built environment. These challenges also demand that serious design scholarship move from the margins to the center of the larger cultural discussion.
Academic Partners enjoy the opportunity to make key organizational decisions, collaborate with peer institutions, and inform a dynamic conversation about the future of design.
Academic Partners have a seat on our Board of Directors and enjoy full voting rights.
Academic Partners are acknowledged on nearly every page across the site, and represented on a dedicated page with institutional biographies, logos, and links. Academic Partners can also promote their news on Places Wire, which highlights major events, initiatives, publications, and stories about our Partners and their faculties, alongside news of general interest to the field. Wire items also circulate on Twitter under the hashtag #placeswire.
Academic Partners make possible the ongoing enrichment of an extensive and easily searchable archive of substantial articles, accessible to everyone with no paywall, the creation of valuable new initiatives including topical Reading Lists, and Places Books, our collaborative imprint with Princeton University Press. Academic Partners also receive teaching materials designed by Places editors.
Places News
We are thrilled to announce that Places Journal has received a grant of $500,000 from the Mellon Foundation to support a new project called “An Unfinished Atlas.”
Places News
SCI-Arc has launched “Voices from Places Journal,” a new series at the SCI-Arc Channel featuring interviews with Places authors.
89,000
Unique Monthly Visitors
86,000
Followers on Social Media
12,700
Email Subscribers
1,000,000
Article Views Annually
4,000 *
Hours Read Monthly
* Active reading, directly measured by scroll behavior
56%
North America
24%
Europe
13%
Asia
7%
Australia,
South America, and Africa
* Active reading, directly measured by scroll behavior
A deep and ever growing archive of interdisciplinary scholarship, narrative journalism, essays, criticism, and photography. New articles are published weekly.
For our narrative surveys on Pandemic Teaching and Design Activism, dozens of academics and professional share their perspectives on the acute challenges and ongoing problems of contemporary education and practice.
An interactive page that allows researchers to bookmark articles and share innovative curricula.
A collaboration with Princeton University Press featuring short, lively volumes expanded from selected Places articles.
Our article series include Future Archive, which gives older writings on design new visibility in the digital era; the Arcus | Places Prize, which focuses on gender, sexuality, and the built environment; and The Inequality Chronicles, on the spatial consequences of structural racism in U.S. cities.
Our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds engage tens of thousands of readers around the world every day, and our email newsletter brings a regular roundup of articles, news, and reading lists to leading thinkers and policymakers.
Join Places Journal’s network of visionary and committed Partners in building the future of public scholarship on architecture, landscape, and urbanism.