My Bookmarks
Three Lavas
Places Journal
A survey of three lava fields that have catalyzed creative interventions: in Hawaiʻi, Iceland, and Mexico City.
Interfacing Urban Intelligence
Places Journal
As we build so-called “smart” cities, we need to consider the point of engagement where citizens interface with the city’s operating system.
Library as Infrastructure
Places Journal
Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch the public library?
Hollywood Architects
Places Journal
Hollywood’s onscreen professional worlds are populated largely by white men, and one of the whitest and most masculine of these worlds is architecture.
Community Plumbing
Places Journal
Let’s hear it for the neighborhood hardware store. Here, amidst the nuts and bolts, we cultivate the potential to order things, places, communities, politics, and values — we might even say, to build and repair worlds.
Methodolatry and the Art of Measure
Places Journal
The new wave of urban data science (and solutionism) is trending toward an obsession with data-for-data’s-sake and an idolization of method.
History of the Urban Dashboard
Places Journal
Futuristic control rooms with endless screens of blinking data are proliferating in cities across the globe. Welcome to the age of Dashboard Governance.
Chicago Inside Out
Places Journal
Forget the flashiness of city politics. Cook County has quietly become one of the best places in the nation for thinking creatively about the role of government in people’s lives.
Belgrade: History of the Present
Places Journal
Belgradians have endured bombings, sanctions, flood, and political tumult. Now can they survive global real estate?
The (Still) Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing
Places Journal
Decades ago Catherine Bauer argued passionately that governments must ensure that all citizens are well housed — a call to action more vital than ever as our shelter crisis deepens.