Places

“What if we took each sourdough selfie, each Zoom class, each Peloton ride, each Netflix binge and mapped the ecology of resources and services that have made it possible for some of us? And at the same time impossible for others?” On pandemic maps and the Great Pause.

“In Japanese architecture and science fiction from the 1960s through the 1990s, we can trace an enduring question: ‘how to make substantial architecture when substantial things are losing their meaning.’”

When Benton MacKaye first conceptualized the Appalachian Trail, it was meant to be much more than a hiking route — it was the foundation of an economic and social restructuring of the East Coast.

On the way from the old Brooklyn to the new, branded, post-industrial Brooklyn, the city got lost.

For the first time in decades, Angelinos have taken a profound interest in their own Los Angeles River, reclaiming parts of its concrete-lined course as parks and bike paths and plotting its rebirth. The river’s history shows that history is cyclical, not linear.

As the bioengineering of people and cities converges, where do we locate the public sphere?

Urban theorists and tech accelerators are asking what cities would look like if people built new ones from the ground up with innovation and the internet at their core, but can we treat cities the way we treat startups and technology?