About Places

Founded 28 years ago by architecture faculty at MIT and Berkeley, Places is an interdisciplinary journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism, with particular emphasis on the public realm as physical place and social ideal. Places is a 501(c)3 organization, published by the Places Journal Foundation and supported by a consortium of North American and European universities as well as organizational and individual sponsors.

In 2009 Places published its last print issue and moved online as an open-access journal in partnership with the Design Observer Group. In this new format, Places publishes peer-reviewed scholarship as well as topical commentary, observations, reviews and visual portfolios, with two new articles every week. The entire print archive is also available in pdf format.

In Places’ first issue, published by MIT Press in July 1983, editors Donlyn Lyndon and Wiliam L. Porter articulated themes that motivate the journal to this day: to focus on “public spaces in the service of shared and egalitarian ideals of society” and to explore “the highest standards of public responsibility and design.” Like our colleagues in the Design Observer Group, we are committed to design as a catalyst of change.

Masthead

Editor

Nancy Levinson

Assistant Editor

Josh Wallaert

Photo Editor

Aaron Rothman

Peer Review Editors

Ellen Dunham-Jones
Renata Hejduk

Contributing Editors

David Adjaye is Principal of David Adjaye Architects in London. Recent projects include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo.

Ian Baldwin is an architect and critic based in Providence, Rhode Island.

Carol Burns is Principal of Taylor & Burns Architects in Boston, Massachusetts, where her work focuses on using architecture to address social, cultural and environmental issues.

Thomas J. Campanella is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World.

Matthew Coolidge is the Founder and Director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles.

Margaret Crawford is Professor of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and co-editor of Everyday Urbanism.

Julia Czerniak is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University and the director of UPSTATE.

Keith Eggener is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Jan Otakar Fischer is an American architect and critic who has lived in Berlin since 1993.

David Heymann is the Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professor in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Walter Hood is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley.

John Kaliski is an architect in Los Angeles, founder and principal of the urban design firm Urban Studio, and co-editor of Everyday Urbanism.

Mark Klett is Regents' Professor of Art at Arizona State University. He is the author of Third View, a re-photography project of the American West.

Mark Lamster is the author of Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens.

Nina-Marie Lister is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Timothy Love is principal of Utile, a Boston-based architecture and urban design firm, and an Associate Professor at Northeastern University.

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College.

Linda Pollak is principal of Marpillero Pollak Associates in New York City and author, with Anita Berrezbeitia, of Inside/Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape.

Michael Pollan is author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Barbara Penner is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.

Roger Sherman is co-director of cityLab at UCLA and principal of Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design.

Michael Sorkin is Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan.

Charles Waldheim is Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. He is the editor of The Landscape Urbanism Reader.

Jane Wolff is Director of Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Delta Primer.

Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm is published by the Places Journal Foundation. Design Observer, and its related channels, Observatory, Change Observer, Places, Observer Media and Observers Room, are owned and operated by Observer Omnimedia LLC, and are collectively referred to here as The Design Observer Group Sites.

General comments about Places may be sent to editors [at] placesjournal.org.

Postal mail may be sent to Places Journal, Nancy Levinson, 3536 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94118.

All essays, comments and other content published on The Design Observer Group Sites and in Places Journal, remain the property of their authors. While reproduction of more than a reasonable excerpt without the author's permission is prohibited, by submitting any content to The Design Observer Group Sites authors give Observer Omnimedia LLC or the Design History Foundation, as the case may be, permission to republish or reprint, either online or in print, all such content.

Design Observer and Places Journal have no obligations for the comments posted on its site. We encourage comments to be short and to the point, and to be courteous to others in the discussion. We discourage comments that are off-topic, unnecessarily antagonistic or defamatory, or in violation of intellectual property laws. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to these standards..