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Essay: Richard Ingersoll

Eat the City

"Urban development has eaten away the clear edges of cities," writes Richard Ingersoll, "leaving ambiguous empty spaces." Ingersoll explores how innvovative landscape architects and urbanists are grappling with these "patchy areas," and he proposes an alternative approach he calls "civic agriculture" — the reconceptualization of cities as diverse agricultural zones, from productive parks to allotments, with the ultimate goal of a richer public realm.

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Opinion:: Vishaan Chakrabarti

Building Hyperdensity and Civic Delight

Americans are famously conflicted about urban development: somehow we've demonized both sprawl and density. But today there is a new conversation about the future of cities, driven by diversifying social desires, evolving technologies, and pressing environmental constraints. Here Vishaan Chakrabarti contributes a bold argument for hyperdensity. The very dense city, he says, not only promotes prosperity, sustainability and delight; it will also determine our strength as a nation.

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Essay: Eric W. Sanderson

Roads to Rails

Eric W. Sanderson investigates the physics of human transport (speed and energy cost) and argues that streetcars are the best way to travel. “I know what you’re thinking,” he writes. “Why didn’t they succeed the first time around?” After looking at historical models, he lays out his plan for a modern streetcar revival, supported by municipal investment in urban rail and short-term concession agreements.

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Slideshow & Essay: Terry Evans & Elizabeth Farnsworth

Dakota Is Everywhere

For the past two years, photographer Terry Evans and journalist Elizabeth Farnsworth have been traveling regularly to North Dakota to explore the fracking boom that is transforming the prairie and disrupting the lives of the people who live there. As they found, North Dakotans are struggling to balance the boon of oil-related payrolls with the heartbreak of a ravaged environment.

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Critique: Despina Stratigakos

Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia

Over the decades women architects have received scant attention from historians and prize juries. As Despina Stratigakos writes, "The painful cancellation of Denise Scott Brown in the awarding of the Pritzker Prize solely to her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi, is an important but hardly exceptional example of how female partners are written out of history by a profession suffering from Star Architect Disorder, or SAD." Stratigakos argues that it's time to write women back into history — and that the place to start is Wikipedia.

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Essay: Tom Vanderbilt

The City and the Sea

For several years New York City has been exploring how to plan for climate change, but last fall Hurricane Sandy exposed the many vulnerabilities of the coastal metropolis. As Tom Vanderbilt writes: "The sea will not be forgotten." Vanderbilt surveys the landscape and politics of both early response and long-range efforts, and he explores the persistent challenges — political, economic, cultural — that make it hard to transform a centuries-old settlement.

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Interview: David Burney & Nancy Levinson

An Interview with David Burney: On New York and the 21st-Century City-State

For almost a decade David Burney has been Commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction in New York City. In an interview with Places editor Nancy Levinson, he reflects on the urban design record of the Bloomberg years, focusing especially on PlaNYC, the ongoing post-Sandy recovery effort, and the potential for cities to take the lead in 21st-century sustainability planning.

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Gallery: Thomas Locke Hobbs & Aaron Rothman

Barranca

Thomas Locke Hobbs is interested in the subtle systems and forces that shape a sense of place in the urban landscape. The photographer lived in Buenos Aires for several years, and he uses that city's topography as the organizing principle of the series presented here. “After living in Buenos Aires for a while," he writes, "the flatness, the impossibility of having a vista from which to orient oneself, began to feel oppressive. I started taking pictures around a small but notable feature: the brief slant of the barely perceptible riverbank, or barranca.”

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Essay: Daniel A. Barber

Hubbert’s Peak, Eneropa, and the Visualization of Renewable Energy

For decades scientists and politicians — and environmentalists and architects — have been debating the benefits of moving from fossil fuels to renewable resources. Daniel Barber traces this debate back to the postwar era, when the potential of renewables was seen as boundless, and when, as Barber explains, leading scientists argued that shifting from carbon-based energy to the cleaner power of sun and wind "should be understood as a moral obligation even before it became an economic necessity."

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Featured: Sustainable New York

Nancy Levinson
After the Storm

Guy Nordenson, et al.
On the Water

Hillary Brown
Infrastructural Ecologies

Partner News: University of Toronto

One Spadina Crescent

A new building for the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto, designed by NADAAA, will transform an urban landmark into the anchor of a central city design district.

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Partner News: Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech's College of Architecture Appoints New Dean

Professor French has been with Georgia Tech since 1992; he will take on the position of dean beginning July 1.

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Remembrance: Places Editors

Richard Shepard, 1945 – 2013

Richard Shepard, a longstanding friend and supporter of Places, died on April 18 after a brief illness. Over the years Richard held several important roles on Places, serving as publisher of the print journal and as treasurer of the board of directors during our first years as an online journal.

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Partner News: University of Minnesota

Public Interest Design Week

The event, which will be held March 19 – 24 on the Minneapolis campus, includes lectures, panels, screening and workshops, plus keynote speakers Michael Kimmelman, Krista Donaldson and Liz Ogbu.

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Partner News: MIT

MIT Announces Center for Advanced Urbanism

The new research initiative is committed to fostering a rigorous design culture for the large scale by focusing disciplinary conversations about architecture, urban planning and systems thinking on problems emerging in the 21st century.

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Partner News: Pratt Institute

Ronald Shiffman Receives Two Major Awards

Planning professor Ronald Shiffman receives the 2013 National Planning Pioneer Award from the American Planning Association and the 2012 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership from the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Partner News: Woodbury University

Catherine Opie Show at Woodbury University

The Julius Shulman Institute will present Catherine Opie: In & Around L.A. at Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery, February 16 – March 24, with a public reception on March 2.

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Partner News: University of Manitoba

Atmos Symposium on Ecology and Design

The fifth annual symposium, hosted by the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture, will be held February 7–9.

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FORUM OF DESIGN FOR THE PUBLIC REALM

DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS

Places Print Archive

The Space Between
Summer 1993

The Space Between [Portfolio: The Space Between]

Exploring Prototypes [Portfolio: The Space Between]

Paths: The Nature of Linear Public Space [Portfolio: The Space Between]

Recommended Book

Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment
David Gissen, Editor
For the May/June 2010 issue of Architectural Design, guest editor David Gissen has assembled an extremely strong collection of articles and projects, all exploring "the possibility of an architecture that actively produces its external, environmental conditions." [NL]
Buy This Book >>
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