My Bookmarks
Why A Marsh
Places Journal
A writer and a scientist trace the deep history of a marsh on the Hudson River, from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age and from the industrial era to our problematic present.
Tree Thinking
Places Journal
Trees have served as models of intellectual inquiry and as sites of religious and civic deliberation. Now they are inspiring deeper forms of ecological investigation.
Taking the Measure of a Forest
Places Journal
Maple Grove is so small you could learn its trees in an afternoon. But run a transect through the site, and you’ll find a forest preserve shaped by millennia of human settlement and plant evolution.
Earthward
Places Journal
A landscape historian reviews @everytract — a Twitter bot created by artist and urban planner Neil Freeman that is slowly posting satellite pictures of all 74,134 U.S. census tracts.
The Middle of Everywhere
Places Journal
In the Flint Hills of Kansas there are cattle ranches and art galleries, old barns and new architecture, ghost towns and growing cities. And there is the last stand of tallgrass prairie in America.
The Land Where Birds Are Grown
Places Journal
A visit to the engineered wetlands of California’s intensively cultivated Central Valley.
"Dreaming True"
Places Journal
For nearly half a century, the pioneering landscape architect Martha Brookes Hutcheson used her own farm to empower women and to build an ecological design theory through action.
The Domestication of the Garage
Places Journal
J.B. Jackson’s 1976 essay on the evolution of the American garage displays his rare ability to combine deep erudition with eloquent and plainspoken analysis.
An Illustrated History of the Picnic Table
Places Journal
From campground to crab shack to suburban backyard, the ingenious form of the picnic table has remained largely unchanged since the 1930s.
What Happens After the Worst Happens?
Places Journal
New photographs of Mount St. Helens, alongside classic views by Frank Gohlke, show the land’s extraordinary response after the 1980 eruption.
A Map of Radical Bewilderment
Places Journal
Forget his reputation as a nature writer. Henry David Thoreau was also a highly trained, well regarded, disciplined though eccentric land surveyor.
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 Last Fire and the Next One
Places Journal
It’s fair to ask whether we should rebuild in disaster-prone areas. But aren’t we all vulnerable now, to one degree or another? The landscape of disaster is changing.
Designing Indian Country
Places Journal
Suppose Native America is not over, that there is no “after colonialism.” How do we create public spaces that enable true contact between cultures?
The Lay of the Land
Places Journal
Place and land and nature: how we tie these things together is critical to our sense of self-purpose and our fit in the world.
Divide and Conquer
Places Journal
The abstract lines we’ve drawn across America — the Mason Dixon Line, the Transcontinental Railroad — still resonate in the cultural landscape of the nation.
Isthmus: On the Panama Canal Expansion
Places Journal
The shockwave of Panama Canal expansion is reshaping cities throughout the Americas. We need to look through the lens of landscape, not logistics.
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.
Beyond Google Earth
Places Journal
Satellite imagery might seem neutral, but it is constructed by systems which not only present but also transform the raw visual data.
Levees That Might Have Been
Places Journal
A history of forgotten inventions that would have produced a very different landscape along American rivers.
From Architecture to Landscape
Places Journal
Landscape architects have begun to venture from the confines of garden, park, and plaza into more adventurous practice. Now the field needs a new name: landscape science.
The Flora of the Future
Places Journal
Celebrating the botanical diversity of cities. A photo survey of urban wild plants.
Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies
Places Journal
The word “ecology” has been co-opted so widely that it has lost real meaning, yet it remains a powerful lens for designers working with complex adaptive systems.
Resurveying the West
Places Journal
A contemporary photographer’s work resonates with 19th-century views of the American West.
Confluences
Places Journal
Photographs of a landscape of incredible contradictions in the Inland Pacific Northwest.
Nowhere and Everywhere: The Colorado Delta
Places Journal
Aerial photographs of a fragile yet resilient ecosystem that has been a casualty of the water wars that have shaped the American West.
The Vernacular of Disaster
Places Journal
As climate change accelerates, your catastrophic language and mine — your flood and my drought — are connected as they’ve never been before.
The Idea of Landscape
Places Journal
Three artists interpret the view from above — and the very idea of landscape itself.
On the Road Home
Places Journal
What is the meaning of home? An anthropologist searches for answers from Aaron Spelling’s mansion in Beverly Hills to the Kalahari windbreaks erected by the !Kung San.
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.
Drylands: Water and the West
Places Journal
Our hydrological infrastructure is now nearly obsolete. Water is rapidly becoming the largest and least understood environmental challenge of the 21st century.
Country Life
Places Journal
A poem about Eastern European immigrants in the American Midwest.
Road Ecology: Wildlife Habitat and Highway Design
Places Journal
The emerging field of road ecology will define the next generation of highway design.
Visualizing Landscapes: In the Terrain of Water
Places Journal
A portfolio exploring the representation of water and landscape, from the Beaux Arts to the digital.
The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River
Places Journal
The ruins of an abandoned 200-acre hydraulic model of the Mississippi River Basin testify to the decades-long battle to control the great river.
Frederick Law Olmsted’s Campaign for Public Health
Places Journal
A forgotten but vital chapter in the career of America’s most illustrious landscape architect: Olmsted’s brief stint as head of the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.
White Space
Places Journal
On the urban design potential of snow. Standard plowing techniques could become creative tools for generating “white parks” and other winter landscapes.
Niagara: It Has It All
Places Journal
Honeymoon spot, casino resort, Superfund site. Niagara has always been a place of extreme contrasts, where the sublime and magnificent cozies up to the tawdry and brutal.