“On one level, Trump’s executive order is preposterous, a jab at liberal elite taste and a sop to architectural fundamentalists with deep links to conservative networks driving the second-term agenda…Clearly, though, the order is less about aesthetics than power, and on this level, it is dangerous.”

The Trump regime is deploying an outdated architectural style war to demonize the headquarters of federal agencies in Washington, D.C. But its real assault is against the democratizing programs of these agencies, which are dedicated to fair housing, clean energy, public health, and humanitarian aid.

HAPPENING TODAY! Tune in via Zoom at 1:00pm PT to hear from designers, editors, and authors about the work that fills the interior of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Places Editor Nancy Levinson will be speaking about PORCH: A Library. Join us! Registration is free.

ICYMI: This spring, we curated a library of 700+ books examining the commitments of people to one another and to the planet, and exemplifying the porch as a shelter for democratic encounter. Hundreds of books were on the shelf in the U.S. Pavilion at the Biennale. And we also built a bibliography:

Join us for a day of conversations about the design & curatorial vision of the U.S. Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, hosted this MONDAY 11/17 by @archpaper.com. As part of a panel of contributors, Places Editor Nancy Levinson will share the curatorial work behind PORCH: A Library.

In the 1980s, in Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their collaboration helped galvanize the Sanctuary Movement, a humanitarian immigrant defense project that pioneered new models of citizen resistance. From @cetracey.bsky.social:

Journalist and critic @timothyaschuler.bsky.social is lecturing TODAY @kstate.bsky.social College of Architecture, Planning & Design. His lecture will explore overlooked + forgotten landscapes across the American Midwest, drawing from his work as Places critic-in-residence in landscape architecture.

This new piece from @shannonmattern.bsky.social about the role of libraries in public life is extraordinary. There's so much I want to quote from it, but I'd encourage you to take the time to read it yourself instead... placesjournal.org/article/extr...

Happening TODAY!! @cetracey.bsky.social presents her On the Brinck | Places Prize lecture, "The Theology of Smuggling: A Genealogy of Humanitarianism in the Borderlands." Attend in-person, @unm.edu School of Architecture and Planning, or tune in on Zoom!

What if we could work with our public libraries to create + sustain convivial infrastructures for local news, local 🎶, digital equity, and more? I wrote abt lots of communities that are doing this work, bldg networks of solidarity + resistance, modeling alternatives to extractive commercial systems.

"To what extent have the removals and re-sitings of Confederate monuments across the South sparked broader reckonings with histories of racial injustice, and how will current backlash against attempts to confront this racist past continue to refashion the landscape?"

Amid the restoration of a Confederate monument in D.C. and Trump's dismantling of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, this essay by David Cunningham is a critical read. Cunningham visited the site of every Confederate monument removed since 2015, documenting how the landscape has (or hasn't) changed.

Don't miss this lecture by @cetracey.bsky.social on theology, colonialism and humanitarianism in the Southwestern U.S. — part of our On the Brinck | Places Prize collab with the School of Architecture + Planning @unm.edu. Albuquerque folks! Details below. Or join by Zoom: unm.zoom.us/j/97216782176

Since 2015, dozens of communities across the American South have removed, relocated & modified Confederate monuments. Often, symbolic and material imprints remain — and sometimes, the statues are simply reinstalled... Public scholar David Cunningham wrote on this very subject for Places last month.

The anger and despair can feel all-consuming, but I'm hoping that this can be a source of encouragement — a reminder that we can support and defend these local institutions and their broader networks of solidarity

Amid a war on public knowledge, libraries are pushing outward, enlarging the commons through new configurations of civic and creative life. In her latest — and, yes, 34th! — article for Places, @shannonmattern.bsky.social writes about building the infrastructure we need to keep ourselves free.

I wrote about public libraries as spaces of civic solidarity, common knowledge, and public infrastructure — all endangered by commercial and federal saboteurs

In attacking libraries, Donald Trump is waging a war on public knowledge. Such pressures make the core mission of libraries harder, yet rather than retreat, libraries can push outward, enlarging the commons through new configurations of civic and creative life. From @shannonmattern.bsky.social:

This piece is really moving and informative. Thanks to @anandwrites.bsky.social for sharing it in this morning's newsletter. placesjournal.org/article/bles...

I'm sure you know of this already... a brilliant essay on cardboard packaging by Shannon Mattern. @shannonmattern.bsky.social placesjournal.org/article/soci...

“That’s the thing you learn the hard way when you come of age in a colony: while colonization is always about the big things of racial discrimination, land dispossession, and political subordination, it’s actually the little things that hurt the most.” — Julian Aguon, “Blessed is the Spot”:

“I was born with a hole in my heart. Technically, what I have is a heart murmur, but my sister says it’s why I’m so sensitive. Still, to place the blame for my broken heart on that hole would be a mistake. For brokenheartedness is a byproduct of having been born and raised in Guam...” — Julian Aguon

"Blessed is the Spot" by Julian Aguon for @placesjournal.bsky.social "It’d be years before the federal government would come clean about how the sand and water were heavily contaminated with industrial chemicals linked to cancer." placesjournal.org/article/bles... #envhist

"Brokenheartedness is a byproduct of having been raised in Guam, especially if you are Indigenous to this island. If you're Chamorro, you're always coming back from burying the dead." Julian Aguon, on his father's death & the high rates of cancer in Guam from radiation caused by U.S. nuclear tests.

“Brokenheartedness is a byproduct of having been raised in Guam, especially if you are Indigenous to this island … In Guam, an average of one person per day is diagnosed with cancer, while every other day, one person dies of it. If you are Chamorro, you are always coming back from burying the dead.”

"Blessed is the Spot" by Julian Aguon, international human rights lawyer In a territory like Guam, contaminated by decades of unchecked radiation from U.S. military activity, everything is political, even cancer. Read more: placesjournal.org/article/bles...

In a place like Guam, one of the oldest colonies in the world, intimacy & empire are always colliding. To grow up on this island, exposed to unchecked radiation from U.S. military activity, is to know death not as an interruption but a condition of daily life. From human rights lawyer Julian Aguon:

In "The City and the City and the City," urban researcher Ayham Dalal writes about a mapping workshop he helped organize with refugees of Homs, Syria, to collectively reimagine a city destroyed by war. Below is a thread about the essay, featuring a comic that illustrates the work they did together.

Sixteen refugees attended a collaborative mapping workshop in Berlin. Their goal: reconstitute the city of Homs, Syria, through overlapping memories of a place they once called home. As music by Lebanese singer Fairuz played in the background, memories poured forth of a city leveled by war. (1/5)

"Under the Assad regime ... we lived together [in Homs] but did not see the city through one another’s eyes. Even planners don't recognize fractures in the pluralist city. A just and inclusive reconstruction must confront the sectarian and class-based ruptures that old urban forms helped conceal."

This essay on place making in a pluralist city, valuing memory and identity and acknowledging fracture, but also moving toward a collective rebuilding and repair, is vital reading. It's about Homs in Syria, but no city can design its way out of history: placesjournal.org/article/mapp...

The shutdown of the federal government has entered its second week. In 2019, during a shutdown lasting 35 days, Nancy Levinson wrote about how a shutdown reveals the unsung work of the federal civil service — and the peril of tasking unqualified people with project management of the United States.

“After the Syrian civil war ended in 2024, transition leaders begun talk of reconstruction. But whose Homs do they want to rebuild? …We have to learn to see the city how others see it, drawing maps, starting from the places we know best and filling in the spaces between through careful negotiation.”

"The City and the City and the City" by Ayham Dalal A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, illuminates the complexity of rebuilding after war. Read more: placesjournal.org/article/mapping-homs-syria-rebuilding-after-war/

A mapping workshop with refugees from Homs, Syria, asked participants to draw their neighborhoods from memory, bridging gaps between houses to generate a shared image of a city destroyed by war. To rebuild justly, residents will need to understand this pluralist city as others have lived within it.

You can’t visit many sites on the web these days without being bombarded by ads, pop-ups, and paywalls. We’re happy to report that there is absolutely nothing to interrupt you when you read an article on placesjournal.org. No ads, no pop-ups, no distractions. A rare luxury in online reading today.

“From the Archive” is a monthly dispatch of Places articles, recommended by the editors. This month, we consider essays on resisting displacement, erasure, and hegemony, feat. a housing cooperative in Mexico City; environmentalists in the Palestinian village of Battir; and Bay Area design radicals.

fascinating piece in @placesjournal.bsky.social l placesjournal.org/article/batt...

Love this. Photo folks👇📸

Photographs are often seen as transparent stand-ins for whatever they depict. A new series in Places aims to draw attention to images + other 2-D representations as visual artifacts in and of themselves. In short, visually driven essays, authors consider a single image with a strong sense of place.

"Although it can undoubtedly be considered a group portrait, there is no mention of the subjects in the original title. Only the place and time are registered. The darkening corners reveal the camera being pushed to its limit ... to achieve a closeness to the subjects and openness to the setting."

Evelyn Hofer’s portrait of Gaelic football players says as much about the setting as it does her subjects. Her camera captures four athletes in jewel-toned jerseys and an Ireland in slow transition from colony to nation. From Hugh Campbell, the latest in our new and ongoing series, “In a Picture”:

‘In architecture,’ Fitch wrote, ‘there are no spectators: there are only participants.’ @placesjournal.bsky.social #FutureArchive placesjournal.org/article/arch...

A New Dealer turned Columbia preservationist who helped save Grand Central, this piece traces how James Marston Fitch tied design to democracy and opposed suburban sprawl, urban renewal, and privatized luxury. By Nancy Levinson in @placesjournal.bsky.social

Our Sept. newsletter: Boyce Upholt, on community energy hubs in New Orleans; Nancy Levinson, on the legacy of architect & preservationist James Marston Fitch; a new installment of “Bookshelf”; and a Reading List drawn from the Library we curated for the Venice Architecture Biennale. Read & sign up!

Since 2015, more than one hundred communities across the South have removed, relocated, or modified Confederate monuments. "The weight of the objects was never solely symbolic," sociologist David Cunningham writes. "Their material imprints remain heavy, even when their places now appear as voids."

Since 2015, more than 100 communities across the American South have removed, relocated or modified Confederate monuments. Some have been replaced, but in most cases, only scars mark the ground where a statue once stood. How are these symbolic and material imprints reshaping sites of public memory?

“Broken world thinking is not about anticipating, or learning from, failure. It is a habit of mind that thinks through the next states and effects of our systems as the very basis of design. In modernity, to break is to fail… Broken world thinking is optimistic about the inevitability of breakdown.”

From the Archive: A review essay on “All Is Lost,” a survival film starring the great Robert Redford lost at sea, in a solo struggle with nature. “The film is a parable about our collective struggle with life at the end of modernity, as our fragile certainties are giving way and breaking down.”

From the Archive: A review essay on “All Is Lost,” a survival film starring the great Robert Redford lost at sea, in a solo struggle with nature. “The film is a parable about our collective struggle with life at the end of modernity, as our fragile certainties are giving way and breaking down.”