Places Journal

10/14/2026

Our seasonal roundup of recent books on buildings, landscapes, and cities includes new work by Eyal Weizman, Kelly Lytle Hernández, and Mark Lamster. Izzy Kornblatt sifts through Denise Scott Brown’s photographs, and disability scholars Kelly Fritsch and Anne McGuire discover a kinship with broken infrastructure. And that’s just half of it.

Read on for our latest Bookshelf, featuring reviews from Fadi Shayya, David Serlin, Juliana Spahr, Claire Zimmerman, Laura Barraclough, Malini Guha, Michael Schaub, Deepa Ramaswamy, Jaffer Kolb & Hugh Campbell.

Recent books on 'ungrounding' in Palestine, cinematic cities, urban playgrounds, disabled infrastructure, pressed flowers, and more.

10/06/2026

Wildfire recovery planning in the U.S. is almost always driven by the number of buildings that burned. But in Altadena, this count says little about what was actually lost — about the social services and care infrastructures — and about all those whose lives depended on them.

From Nicole Lambrou:

Wildfire recovery tends to overlook damage that can’t be measured. In Altadena, the number of buildings that burned in the Eaton Fire says little about what residents really lost.

09/30/2026

When a violent mob drove Punjabi settlers from Bellingham, Washington, in 1907, the city became a flashpoint for exclusionary rhetoric and new carceral practices of detention and deportation.

For An Unfinished Atlas, Rozina Ali writes about nativist hostilities at the turn of the century, and the ways in which national anxieties about cheap labor and the closing of the American frontier intensified anti-immigrant sentiments in the West.

When a violent mob drove Punjabi settlers from Bellingham, Washington, in 1907, the town became a flashpoint for exclusionary rhetoric and restrictive immigration.

09/15/2026

A tale shared by Native peoples across the circumpolar Arctic tells of a blind man who, with the aid of a loon, kills a woman he feels has wronged him. It is unsurprising that this bird, expert diver and water navigator, with its singular call, has come to shape so many Native stories of place.

Jen Rose Smith writes about the elusive nature of language, and the intricacies of a story that has been passed down orally for generations.

A tale shared by Native peoples across the circumpolar Arctic reveals the elusive nature of language, and has come to shape many Native connections to place.

09/01/2026

The more intimately we understand the metabolisms of our lives — the energy we consume and dissipate every day through our bodies, homes, habits — the more sustainably we can manage the energy flows of cities, economies, and the planet, writes Mireille Roddier. Keeping her Parisian apartment cool during a summer of record heatwaves, without air-conditioning, offers a useful case study.

Keeping a Parisian apartment cool during record heatwaves can teach us how to more sustainably manage the energy flows of cities, economies, and the planet.

08/19/2026

“The Mexico/Guatemala border cuts a volcano in half,” Linda Quiquivix writes. “Better put: the governments of Mexico and Guatemala say they can cut in half a volcano that reaches 13,320 feet in height, is still active, and whose name is Tacaná.”

The place we now call North America rests on a history of dismemberment — a cutting of the earth, violently, into parts, irrespective of the peoples, languages, and worlds that have long resided here. What can the border between Mexico and Guatemala tell us about the limits of North America, as we have imagined it to be?

“Cutting the Earth in Half” is the latest installment in our series, An Unfinished Atlas.

What can the border between Mexico and Guatemala tell us about the limits of North America?

07/28/2026

Two wildfires ravaged the same California hills, 50 years apart. A lack of long-term planning for climate change, combined with residential development that has marched steadily into fire-prone territory, means each blaze is likely to be more destructive than the last. Can we continue to build, and rebuild, on land that will burn again?

Two wildfires ravaged the same California hills, 50 years apart. Can we continue to build, and rebuild, on land that will inevitably burn again?

07/21/2026

Nairobi’s poorest residents have long found uncertain refuge in informal settlements along the city’s rivers. As floods and drought in rural areas drive more Kenyans to Nairobi, many are forced to trade one environmentally precarious situation for another. Now, residents say the city’s Climate Action Plan is being weaponized against them.

Journalist Jacob Kushner reports from Nairobi:

Fleeing floods and drought in rural areas, Kenyans find precarious refuge along Nairobi rivers. Now, residents say the city’s Climate Action Plan is being weaponized against them.

07/09/2026

Route 85 now inspires dread in California commuters, but some will remember when it was a vision of the future, linking a string of cities that were at the forefront of a technological revolution. For those who grew up in Santa Clara County in the 1980s, change seemed self-evident. How often do we recognize the uniqueness of our circumstances?

Read on for tales of the old Silicon Valley, and how the region has changed since it was more popularly known as "The Valley of Heart's Delight." From New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu.

https://placesjournal.org/article/silicon-valley-circuits-highway-85

07/08/2026

Route 85 now inspires dread in California commuters, but some will remember when it was a vision of the future, linking a string of cities that were at the forefront of a technological revolution. For those who grew up in Santa Clara County in the 1980s, change seemed self-evident. How often do we recognize the uniqueness of our circumstances?

Car tales from New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu:

Route 85 in California now inspires dread. Some of us remember when it was a vision of the future.