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Essays

02.20.12: Lawrence Vale

Housing Chicago: Cabrini-Green to Parkside of Old Town
On Places, Lawrence Vale recounts the troubled saga of Chicago's now-demolished Cabrini-Green, and the mixed-income new-urbanist style communities that are replacing the old public housing.
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02.14.12: Jonathan Massey

Housing and the 99 Percent
On Places, Jonathan Massey traces a history of American home ownership, from the boosterism of the 1920s to postwar suburbia to the housing bubble to current foreclosure crisis.
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02.06.12: Keith Eggener

Louis Curtiss and the Politics of Architectural Reputation
On Places, Keith Eggener assesses the work of the neglected Kansas City architect Louis Curtiss — and highlights the politics of professional repuation.
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01.30.12: Deborah Gans

Hospitality Begins at Home
On Places, Deborah Gans visits a digital installation by Israeli artist Maya Zack and the In-House Festival in Jerusalem, and is inspired to explore the spatio-political dimensions of homeland.
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01.23.12: Austin Troy

Thirsty City
On Places, Austin Troy assesses the massive infrastructure required to bring water to the arid American West — and the huge amount of energy that makes it possible to take a shower in Los Angeles.
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01.16.12: Will Holman

Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Design
On Places, Will Holman recounts his experience at Arcosanti, Rural Studio and YouthBuild — and describes the challenge of making a career in public-interest architecture.
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01.09.12: Jerry Herron

The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit
On Places, Jerry Herron tracks the decline and fall of his home city of Detroit, from ruin porn to the demolition of Hudson's to Henry Ford's first horseless carriage.
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01.03.12: Michael P. Branch

The Hills Are Alive
On Places, Michael Branch reflects on how deeply photography and film shape our landscape aesthetics (and how much he detests the Alpine-worshipping The Sound of Music).
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12.12.11: David Heymann

The Evil, Evil Grain Elevator
On Places, David Heymann continues his exploration of buildings and landscapes — and shows how even a building form as familiar as a grain elevator can come to seem evil.
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12.05.11: David Heymann

A Mound in the Wood
On Places, David Heymann continues his exploration of the charged relationship between architecture and landscape.
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12.01.11: Thomas Fisher

The Death and Life of Great Architecture Criticism
On Places, Tom Fisher argues that architecture criticism is ripe for bold reinvention.
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11.28.11: David Heymann

Landscape Is Our Sex
On Places, David Heymann analyzes the logics — and illogics — of the idea that the relationship of a building to its landscape is — or should be — a key element of its design..
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11.17.11: Lisa Findley & Liz Ogbu

South Africa: From Township to Town
On Places, Lisa Findley and Liz Ogbu describe the ongoing struggle to transform the once segrated black townships of South Africa into diverse and thriving towns.
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11.14.11: Robert E. Lang & Arthur C. Nelson

Megapolitan America
On Places, planners Robert Lang and Arthur Nelson argue that the United States can now be understood in terms of a new geography of large and powerful "megapolitan" regions.
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11.10.11: Andrew Ross

Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City
On Places, Andrew Ross analyzes the contradictory political and economic forces that once made Phoenix the fastest-growing city in the U.S. — and today a prime casualty of the crash.
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11.01.11: Phillip Lopate

Above Grade: On the High Line
On Places, writer Phillip Lopate traces the pre-history of the High Line, and ponders whether New York City's elevated park will be a victim of its own success.
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10.20.11: Jason Griffiths

Manifest Destiny: A Guide to the Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing
On Places, British architect Jason Griffiths offers a close reading of modern American suburbia, where mass production meets the myth of the arcadian frontier.
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10.17.11: Cynthia E. Smith

Design with the Other 90%: Cities
On Places, Cynthia Smith, curator of the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition "Design with the Other 90%: CITIES," offers an in-depth look at her research into socially responsive urban design in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
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10.10.11: Enrique Ramirez

I Watch Slacker to Read Austin in the Original
On Places, architectural historian and Texas native Enrique Ramirez assesses Richard Linklater's Slacker and recalls Austin in an earlier and less self-conscious era.
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09.27.11: William L. Fox & Mark Klett

The Half-Life of History
On Places, writer William Fox and photographer Mark Klett document the semi-ruin of the WW II military airfield at Wendover, Utah, where the U.S. Air Force trained for the bombing of HIroshima.
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09.16.11: Barry Bergdoll

The Art of Advocacy: The Museum as Design Laboratory
On Places, MoMA's curator of architecture and design, Barry Bergdoll, describes his efforts to expand the museum's role to support experimentation and advocacy.
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09.12.11: Mimi Zeiger

The Interventionist’s Toolkit, Part 3: Our Cities, Ourselves
On Places, the latest installment of Mimi Zeiger's ongoing series The Interventionist's Toolkit, which explores diverse tactics and projects in DIY urbanism.
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09.06.11: James Barilla

The Road to Exurbia
On Places, James Barilla recounts the rural pleasures of growing up in a hill town in Western Massachusetts — yet regrets the deep environmental footprint of low-density exurban life.
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08.02.11: Richard Powers

What Does Fiction Know?
On Places, novelist Richard Powers grapples with Berlin's history in this meditation on place and narrative.
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07.25.11: Rob Walker

Implausible Futures for Unpopular Places
On Places Rob Walker describes the Hypothetical Development Organization, which creates fanciful renderings of imaginary developments for vacant urban sites — a new form of "architecture fiction."
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07.18.11: Alex Schafran

Scenes from Surrendered Homes
On Places, urban historian Alex Schafran looks closely at Douglas Smith's photographs of foreclosed homes in California, and sees poignant documentation of the personal toll of the great recession.
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07.07.11: David Heymann

The Eastward-Moving House
On Places, David Heymann's "The Eastward-Moving House" — a continuation of the imaginative history of American home-building begun in J.B. Jackson's "The Westward-Moving House."
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07.05.11: J.B. Jackson

The Westward-Moving House: Three American Houses and the People Who Lived in Them
On Places, a republication of J.B. Jackson's classic essay "The Westward-Moving House," which traces the evolution of the American house — the American dream — over three centuries and across the continent.
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06.23.11: Kian Goh

Queer Beacon
On Places, architect Kian Goh explores LGBT public spaces in contemporary New York, where activism confronts gentrification.
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06.20.11: Adelheid Fischer

Starry Night
On Places, Adelheid Fischer describes the growing night-sky movement, which advocates for the cultural and biological benefits of reducing light pollution — and keeping the Milky Way visible.
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06.16.11: Alice T. Friedman

Girl Talk: Marion Mahony Griffin, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Oak Park Studio
On Places, architectural historian Alice Friedman explores the pioneering career of architect Marion Mahony Griffin, who rose to prominence in the Oak Park office of Frank Lloyd Wright.
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06.13.11: Despina Stratigakos

What I Learned from Architect Barbie
Why can't architects wear pink? On Places, Despina Stratigakos describes the feminist politics that inspired Architect Barbie.
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06.09.11: Adelheid Fischer

A Home Before the End of the World
On Places, Adelheid Fischer explores our startling ignorance of the natural world — and wonders whether this is enabling the degradation of the environment.
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06.06.11: Karen Piper

"We Just Want To Be Tourists"
On Places, Karen Piper describes a recent trip to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, where upscale adventure tourism confronted local political protest.
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05.31.11: Martin Hogue

A Short History of the Campsite
On Places, Martin Hogue traces a history of the campsite, from early 20th-century wilderness camps to today's domesticated campgrounds, where the amenities include day spas and wi-fi.
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05.24.11: Michael Maltzan

No More Play
On Places, Michael Maltzan argues that Los Angeles is on the brink of its latest transformation — and at a point where "the very word city no longer applies."
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05.05.11: Donald Judd & Elizabeth Felicella

101 Spring Street
On Places, an essay by Donald Judd on the Soho building where he lived and worked, and selected images of its interiors, by New York photographer Elizabeth Felicella.
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04.27.11: Timothy Mennel

Jane Jacobs, Andy Warhol, and the Kind of Problem a Community Is
On Places, Tim Mennel compares the radically different New York worlds of Andy Warhol's Factory and Jane Jacobs's Village — and comes to some provocative conclusions.
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04.25.11: Thomas J. Campanella

Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning
On Places, Thomas Campanella evaluates the complex legacy Jane Jacobs, including the ongoing marginalization of the urban planning profession.

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04.18.11: Timothy Beatley

Blue Urbanism: The City and the Ocean
On Places, planning professor Tim Beatley makes a case for blue urbanism — a new planning focus on how the design of cities affects the health of the planet's oceans.
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04.05.11: Michael Light & David L. Ulin

L.A. Day/L.A. Night
On Places, a portfolio of images by photographer Michael Light, exploring Los Angeles in the day and at night, with an essay by David L. Ulin.
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03.28.11: Mark Lamster

The Architectural Monograph: A Defense
On Places, Mark Lamster asks: In a dynamic era for practice and publishing, what is the future of the architectural monograph?
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03.21.11: Kristi Dykema Cheramie

The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River
On Places, Kristi Dykema Cheramie explores the ruins of the abandoned Mississippi River Basin Model and ponders the decades-long battle to control the great river.

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03.14.11: Mimi Zeiger

The Interventionist's Toolkit, Part 2: Posters, Pamphlets and Guides
On Places, in the second of her series on The Interventionist's Toolkit, Mimi Zeiger reports on the ingenious use of print media to spur urban activism — and even revolution.
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03.10.11: Tim Culvahouse

Black in Back: Mardi Gras and the Racial Geography of New Orleans
On Places, Tim Culvahouse charts the complex racial geography of New Orleans (and looks in on the Rex and Zulu Mardi Gras parades).
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03.07.11: Beth Weinstein

The Collaborative Legacy of Merce Cunningham
On Places, architect Beth Weinstein highlights a real though often unrecognized architectural type: the diverse collaborations between major choreographers and eminent architects.
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02.27.11: Mohamed Elshahed

Tahrir Square: Social Media, Public Space
On Places, Mohamed Elshahed argues that the physical occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo was just as vital as online social media to the early success of the January 25 Revolution.
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02.21.11: Lisa Findley

Red and Gold: A Tale of Two Apartheid Museums
On Places, architect Lisa Findley explores South African apartheid museums, and the difficulties of memorializing a complex and terrible history.
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02.14.11: Wes Janz

This Is Flint, Michigan
On Places, Wes Janz probes the ongoing decline of Flint, Michigan, and wonders about the role of the architect in a city where there's more demolition than design.
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02.03.11: Tim Culvahouse

The New Orleans Corner Store
On Places, architect Tim Culvahouse continues his series on the built character of New Orleans, with a look at the humble but sociable corner store and its role in the restoration of the city.
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01.31.11: Mimi Zeiger

The Interventionist's Toolkit, Part 1
On Places, Mimi Zeiger reports on what she calls "the interventionist's toolkit" — architects' and urbanists' creative responses to the economic slump.
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01.24.11: Karen Piper

Dreams, Dust and Birds: The Trashing of Owens Lake
On Places, Karen Piper narrates the latest chapter in one California's longest water wars: Los Angeles' efforts to undo the environmental damage done to Owens Lake, decades after its waters were diverted to supply the thirsty metropolis.
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01.18.11: Laura Raskin

Jorge Otero-Pailos and the Ethics of Preservation
On Places, journalist Laura Raskin profiles architect and preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos and his "Ethics of Dust" installations at the Venice Biennale and Manifesta.
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01.10.11: Nate Berg

Burning Man and the Metropolis
On Places, Nate Berg looks at Burning Man, and how a beach party in San Francisco mushroomed into a week-long temporary city of 50,000 out in the Nevada desert.
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01.04.11: Jim Williamson

What Passes for Beauty: A Death in Texas
On Places, architect Jim Williamson recollects the aesthetic frustration and unexpected epiphany of his first project as an architect in Midland, Texas, the commission for the gravesite of the wife of an oil millionaire.
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12.13.10: David Heymann

Site, Ascendant
On Places, the last installment of David Heymann's series on the rising importance of landscape to architecture, seen in works by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Peter Zumthor, OMA, Zaha Hadid, and others.
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12.06.10: David Heymann

Nature-ization Takes Command
On Places, the second in a series of essays by David Heymann exploring the dynamic relationship of landscape and architecture, evident in works ranging from big civic projects by Norman Foster to small rural houses by Glenn Murcutt.
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11.29.10: David Heymann

A Cloud on a Lake
On Places, architect David Heymann explores the charged relationship between buildings and landscapes in works as diverse as Diller Scofidio + Renfro's notorious Blur Building and Hiroshi Sugimoto's minimalist seascapes.
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11.18.10: Barbara Penner

Flush with Inequality: Sanitation in South Africa
On Places, just in time for World Toilet Day 2010, Barbara Penner explores the complex political, social and environmental meanings of sanitation in post-apartheid South Africa.
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11.15.10: Thomas Fisher

Frederick Law Olmsted and the Campaign for Public Health
On Places, Tom Fisher explores a forgotten chapter in the illustrious career of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted: his brief but exemplary period as head of the U.S. Sanitary Commission.
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11.08.10: Millay Hyatt

On the Trail of the Berlin Wall
On Places, writer Millay Hyatt treks the 100-mile trail of the former Berlin Wall, and observes the complicated merging of east and west, past and present.
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11.04.10: Charles Waldheim

Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism
On Places, Charles Waldheim sketches a history of agriculture in cities, from Frank Lloyd Wright to ecological urbanism.
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11.01.10: Mason White

The Productive Surface
On Places, Mason White traces a line from the Cité Industrielle to Buckminster Fuller to contemporary designers exploring the potential for built surfaces to produce agriculture, renewable energy, water harvesting, and more.
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10.21.10: Javier Arbona

Dangers in the Air: Aerosol Architecture and Invisible Landscapes
On Places, Javier Arbona looks at innovative projects that conceptualize air — the atmosphere that surrounds us — as a dynamic and even political component of buildings and landscapes.
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10.18.10: Thomas Fisher

Viral Cities
On Places, Thomas Fisher explores "viral cities," looking at historic and contemporary pandemics, and arguing for stronger links between the practices of urban design and public health.
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09.30.10: Tim Culvahouse

Stoop, Balcony, Pilot House: Making It Right in the Lower Ninth Ward
On Places, architect Tim Culvahouse assesses the post-Katrina architecture in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans sponsored by Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation.
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09.20.10: Deborah Gans

Haiti and the Potential of Permaculture
On Places, architect Deborah Gans explores how the temporary resettlement camps in post-earthquake Haiti might be transformed into self-sufficient agrarian villages.
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09.13.10: Keith Eggener

Size Matters: Small Towns with Big Things
From the Burj Khalifa to the world's biggest ball of twine, size matters. On Places, architectural historian Keith Eggener takes an expansive look at largeness, especially "big things in small towns."
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09.03.10: James Sanders

Hallowed Ground, Worldly City: Ground Zero and the Struggle for Lower Manhattan
On Places, James Sanders looks at the current controversy over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in a larger context, noting that New York City has for most of its history "abhorred the very idea of memorials."
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07.08.10: Jerry Herron

Borderland/Borderama/Detroit: Part 3
On Places, the third and final installment of "Borderland/Borderama/Detroit," an exploration of the rise and fall — and persistence — of Detroit, and what it means in American culture, by writer and historian Jerry Herron.
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07.07.10: Jerry Herron

Borderland/Borderama/Detroit: Part 2
On Places, part 2 of "Borderland/Borderama/Detroit," an exploration of the rise and fall — and persistence — of Detroit, and what it means in American culture, by writer and historian Jerry Herron.
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07.06.10: Jerry Herron

Borderland/Borderama/Detroit: Part 1
On Places, the first installment of "Borderland/Borderama/Detroit," an exploration of the rise and fall — and persistence — of Detroit, and what it means in American culture, by writer and historian Jerry Herron.
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06.09.10: Mitchell Schwarzer

A Sense of Place, A World of Augmented Reality: Part 2
On Places, in the second installment of his two-part essay, architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer argues that augmented reality, combined with social networking, is bringing about "nothing less than a new epoch of social relations."
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06.08.10: Mitchell Schwarzer

A Sense of Place, A World of Augmented Reality: Part 1
On Places, in the first of two-part essay, architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer argues that digital technology, especially the real-time, mediating imageries of augmented reality, are revolutionizing how we perceive and inhabit place.
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05.04.10: James Sanders

Adventure Playground: John V. Lindsay and the Transformation of Modern New York
On Places, James Sanders on the transformation of New York City that began in the Sixties under Mayor John Lindsay — the reinvention of the city from a workaday zone to a scenic setting for urban play, an "adventure playground."
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04.26.10: Barbara Penner

The Wedding at Cana: A Vision by Peter Greenaway
On Places, architectural historian Barbara Penner explores Peter Greenaway's digital video installation of Veronese's The Wedding at Cana, the latest in the series "Nine Classic Paintings Revisited," shown at the recent Venice Biennale.
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04.19.10: Meena Kadri

People's Way: Urban Mobility in Ahmedabad
On Places, New Zealand-based design writer Meena Kadri rides the new bus-rapid-transit in Ahmedabad, a system that strives to mix old and new, rich and poor — and even offers yoga classes to the drivers.
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04.13.10: Tim Love

Paper Architecture, Emerging Urbanism
On Places, Tim Love explores the latest generation of paper architecture being created by under-employed designers — and argues that the current recession offers a real chance to align progressive theory with urban practice.
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04.05.10: Denise Hoffman Brandt

The View to America Street from Mrs. Fair’s Front Door, July 21, 2009
On Places, landscape architect Denise Hoffman Brandt offers a vivid portrait of the ongoing post-Katrina struggles of one neighborhood, and one household, in New Orleans.
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02.01.10: Keith Eggener

Lethal T-Square: Architecture, Violence, Renewal
Robert Moses is often compared with Baron Haussman. Keith Eggener argues that he can be compared as well with the vigilante-architect played by Charles Bronson in Death Wish.
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11.19.09: Dk Osseo-Asare, Quilian Riano

A City in Search of Good Fortune
Architects Quilian Riano and Dk Osseo-Asare report on the profitable but notorious port of Buenaventura, Colombia, as the city battles drug traffickers and paramilitary gangs, poverty and corruption; and they fear that the proposed solutions might be part of the problem.
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11.05.09: Jan Otakar Fischer

The Art of Reunification
On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, architect and writer Jan Otakar Fischer describes the failed competition to create a reunification memorial — and explores the thorny questions of German memory and identity.
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10.30.09: Donlyn Lyndon

Lawrence Halprin, 1916 – 2009
Lawrence Halprin, one of the leading landscape architects of the postwar era, remembered by his longtime friend and colleague Donlyn Lyndon.
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10.20.09: Thomas Fisher

Fracture Critical
Much U.S. infrastructure is "fracture critical" — vulnerable to catastrophic and systemic failure; Thomas Fisher argues that our finance, housing and energy systems are fracture-critical as well.
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10.10.09: Timothy Beatley

The 100-Mile Thanksgiving
Timothy Beatley describes a new tradition in the planning department at the University of Virginia: the 100-Mile Thanksgiving, for which students prepare the annual feast, trying to use food produced within 100 miles of the Charlottesville campus.
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09.11.09: Keith Eggener

Hometown, America
Architectural historian Keith Eggener visits the boyhood homes of Mark Twain and Walt Disney, and finds in each an all-American mix of historic fact, popular fantasy and commercial exploitation.
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09.09.09: Tim Love

Between Mission Statement and Parametric Model
Boston-based architect and educator Tim Love argues that architectural education is in crisis, a result of the increasing tension between digitally driven formal experimentation and new mandates for social responsibility.
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09.09.09: Jonathan Massey

Five Ways to Change the World
Architect and educator Jonathan Massey suggests five ways to influence the built environment — and make the world a better place.
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09.07.09: Tobias Armborst, Daniel D'Oca, Georgeen Theodore

Community: The American Way of Living
Think American suburbia is a sprawl of homogeneous privatopias? The U.S. curators of the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale argue that you haven't been paying attention.
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09.04.09: Andrew Blum

Metaphor Remediation: A New Ecology for the City
Cities are the new frontiers green living, and Andrew Blum argues that we need to revise the old metaphors: will Half Dome give way to the high-rise as the new emblem of environmentalism?
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08.05.09: Nina-Marie Lister

Water/Front
Ecological planner Nina-Marie Lister explores innovative ways to regenerate urban waterfronts.
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05.19.09:

Editor's Page 21:1

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05.19.09: Nancy Levinson

From the Editor

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05.19.09: Daniel Solomon

ReTooling

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10.15.08: Guy Nordenson, Stephen Cassell, Marianne Koch, Catherine Seavitt, James Smith, Michael Tantala, Adam Yarinsky

On the Water: The New York/New Jersey Harbor
As the planet warms, rising seas will endanger coastal communities around the world. Engineer Guy Nordenson proposes a bold plan to protect New York City.
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10.15.08: Robert Campbell

A House on the Lake

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10.15.08: Randolph Hester

Caring about Places and Places

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10.15.08: Kiel Moe

Observations on the Concepts of Place in Post-Risk Societies

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10.15.08: William Porter

Places' 25th Anniversary: An Introduction

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10.15.08: John Roberts

Community Activism vs. Community Design

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10.15.08: Nancy Rottle, Marina Alberti

Climate Change and Place

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10.15.08: Adam Yarinsky

New York City 2106: Back to the Future

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10.15.08: Alex Steffen, Raymond Cole, Kevin Burke, Emanuel Carter, Stephen Luoni, Brian Stone, Frances Halsband, Kristina Hill, Diane Dale, Fritz Steiner, K. Golden, Megan Susman, John Thomas, Steve McDowell, Stephen Antupit

Climate Change and Place Roundtable Discussion

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10.15.08: Paula Vandergert

The CABE Climate Change Festival

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06.15.08: Arthur Danto

The Past in the Present

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06.15.08: Carl Elefante

Renewing Modernism

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06.15.08: Donlyn Lyndon

What Does It Take to Make Place?

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06.15.08: Max Page

Urban Design and Civil Protest

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06.15.08: B. Wortham-Galvin

Mythologies of Placemaking

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06.15.08: Stephen Luoni

Little Rock's Emerging Nonprofit Corridor
The non-profit sector is a major player in promoting green urbanism. Here's what's happening in Little Rock.
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09.19.07: Mark Lamster

The City and the Stream
Antwerp looks to revitalize its once bustling waterfront with a redevelopment plan that anticipates both growth and rising sea levels.
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08.15.07: Garth Rockcastle

The Lost Public Art of Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark infiltrated the worlds of art and architecture, revealing deep complacencies in each.
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05.28.07: Alexandra Lange

Fantasy Island
The fantasy of converting Governors Island to a pedestrian playground is closer to becoming a reality.
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12.15.06: Allan Jacobs

The State of City Planning Today
A veteran city planner and educator analyzes the anemia of U.S. planning, and detects signs of life in neighborhood activism.
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12.15.06: Amy Murphy

Seattle Central Library: Civic Architecture in the Age of Media
In the Seattle Public Library, Rem Koolhaas and OMA work to transform architecture into media interface.
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04.15.05: Susan Rogers

Superneighborhood 27: A Brief History of Change
From hot tubs to bodegas: a Houston subdivision built for the '60s singles lifestyle has found new energy as a multi-ethnic neighborhood.
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10.01.04: Hugh Hardy

To Rally Discussion: The Chelsea High Line

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11.01.01: Ruth Durack

Village Vices: The Contradiction of New Urbanism and Sustainability
A critique of New Urbanism focusing not on its traditionalism but on the unsustainability of its planning models.
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04.01.89: Catherine Brown, William Morrish

Western Civic Art: Works in Progress
In 1989 Phoenix, Arizona, commissioned one of the first public art master plans. The city now has one of the strongest public art programs in the country.
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01.15.84: Kevin Lynch

Caring about Places

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07.15.83: Kevin Lynch

In No Order Whatsoever
Just before his death in 1984, the influential urban planner Kevin Lynch compiled a list of topics he thought important for the future of cities. The list is as relevant as ever.
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