to read
Kampground, America
Places Journal
A visual survey of KOA sites across the United States.
The Architecture of Sports
Places Journal
From signature golf courses to street basketball courts: fields of play are laboratories of spatial invention.
Demolition and Afterlife of Baltimore Memorial Stadium
Places Journal
The saga of Baltimore Memorial Stadium illuminates the relationship between civic building and collective memory.
Minecraft and Me
Places Journal
As the landscapes found within computer games have become more elaborate, they have become more important, and so has the time we spend within them.
The Filing Cabinet
Places Journal
The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of 20th-century nation states and financial systems. Like most infrastructure, it was usually overlooked or forgotten.
Mythologies of Placemaking
Places Journal
Designers and planners talk about “sense of place,” but this murky buzzword often serves to rally support for redevelopment projects that ignore deep patterns of local culture.
Public Interests
Places Journal
Three recent books offer complementary views of the historical shift from public planning to neoliberal privatization — and underscore the need to reclaim planning in the public interest.
Beyond the Map: Spikescapes and Wild Strawberries
Places Journal
Geography is getting stranger: the map is breaking up. Now we need to attend to the unnatural places, the escape zones and gap spaces, sites of bewilderment and unease.
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.
Making it Right in the Lower Ninth Ward
Places Journal
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation pledged to rebuild one of New Orleans’ poorest neighborhoods. Has it lived up to its name?
Bienville’s Dilemma
Places Journal
A new book on New Orleans traces the historical geography from the early 16th century to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning
Places Journal
An urban historian assesses the complex legacy of Jane Jacobs, including the rise of community activism and the marginalization of professional planning.
Five Ways to Change the World
Places Journal
An idiosyncratic and partial guide to activism through architecture.
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.
Highways and Horizons
Places Journal
The Interstate Highway System created a national polity defined by circulation. To rethink the Interstates is to rethink the United States.
Closet Archive
Places Journal
Closets are not just for storage. They are also active, generative spaces where media are made and knowledges born.
How Christopher Wren Came to America
Places Journal
In the middle of Missouri, you will find the one building outside of England connected to England’s greatest architect, Christopher Wren. What the devil is it doing here?