placesjournal.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Jamestown is sinking. I got to spend some time with the photographer Greta Pratt's new project, thanks to @placesjournal.bsky.social and the often misremembered line from Heraclitus: “We step into and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.” placesjournal.org/article/jame...

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

In the Tidewater region of Virginia, the past is slipping beneath the waves. Photographer Greta Pratt documents the interplay between sea level rise and histories of colonialism & slavery. As @daeganmiller.bsky.social writes, “Almost always there’s the water, creeping, reflecting, rising, waiting.”

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On the long history of persecution of Romani people on Czech lands and across Europe — and the discrimination that continues today.

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The persecution of Romani people during World War II has long escaped international scrutiny. From 1971 until 2017, an industrial pig farm operated on the site of a former concentration camp, which, 30 years before, facilitated the imprisonment and murder of the Roma in the Czechoslovak Republic.

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Here's a lovely piece by @topefolarin.bsky.social on just what makes DC special. Thanks @placesjournal.bsky.social placesjournal.org/article/the-...

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“Prolonged silence in the Czech Republic about the Roma Holocaust can be explained, in part, by postwar communist rule, which suppressed accounts of persecution. In 1971, an industrial pig farm was constructed on the grounds of the former concentration camp at Lety, obfuscating its dark history.”

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

The mass murder of Romani people during World War II has long escaped international scrutiny. In the Czech Republic, calls to memorialize a concentration where Roma people were imprisoned faced decades of resistance. What happens when we choose to forget histories that are essential to remember?

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New from 404 Media: a Musk ally has demanded administrative access to Notify.gov, a system that lets the government text the public. The access would give them large swathes of the publics' personal data too. A worker has resigned in protest rather than give access www.404media.co/musk-ally-de...

submitted 15 days ago • 186 comments

Bright passionate people who wanted to dedicate their lives to public service were fired in a mass email over the holiday weekend. This has absolutely nothing to do with efficiency, fraud, waste, or abuse. And your life will be worse because of it.

submitted 15 days ago • 84 comments

This absolutely will make flying less safe. Maybe not today. But inevitably. Conceivably this will finally get public attention? About the danger of just blowing up structures built with care over decades? Maybe some GOP Sen/Rep will think: "I'd rather not be on the wrong side of this one"?

submitted 16 days ago • 52 comments

For more on the Compton's Cafeteria Riot and the legacies of anti-carceral activism at the intersection of Turk & Taylor Streets, this essay by @susanstryker.bsky.social is worth a close read: "The crossroads of Turk and Taylor challenge us to envision — and build — a future where justice dwells."

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

For more on the Compton's Cafeteria Riot and the legacies of anti-carceral activism at the intersection of Turk & Taylor Streets, this essay by @susanstryker.bsky.social is worth a close read: "The crossroads of Turk and Taylor challenge us to envision — and build — a future where justice dwells."

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"In the 1980s, treatment for AIDS, then widely perceived as a 'gay disease,' depended on counter-institutions & grassroots activism. The Ambassador Hotel had a unique mission: to care for people with HIV no matter their ability to pay, degree of health, substance abuse problems or sexual practices."

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"At the height of the AIDS crisis, Reverend Glenda Hope, the Ambassador’s resident chaplain, remembers that an Ambassador resident died almost every day...But the Hotel was a place where residents formed families and together forged a culture of care and shared experience."

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

During the AIDS epidemic, gay rights activists in San Francisco transformed an SRO into a center for holistic care & community. The residential hotel, which accepted people no matter their ability to pay or their degree of sickness, became a refuge for queer kinship. The latest, from Stathis Yeros:

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Let me hammer this in: -I have endlessly reminded people that US commercial aviation is a miracle of cooperative, collaborative safety systems, studied and admired around the world. -What could make me say: 'Start worrying about getting on an airliner'? Exactly this. Musk bros in the mix.

submitted 28 days ago • 39 comments

Read about how the environmental, governmental, and agricultural communities can work together for salmon conservation (and what we can lose) in my new piece for @placesjournal.bsky.social #Chinook #salmonconservation #extinction #centralvalleydams #californiawaterinfrastructure #californiawater

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

"Wild salmon have a phenotypic plasticity that helps them adapt to habitat changes.They can colonize a new stream if one becomes blocked or delay migration if a stream gets too warm. A rich portfolio of life history options stabilizes populations by spreading risk across habitats and over time."

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Plenty of research conclusively demonstrates how the state’s salmon can share their habitat with tens of millions of people. As it stands, California’s water rights system forces these heroic swimmers to undertake improbably circuitous journeys to thwart extinction.

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California’s Central Valley Chinook migrate through the state’s water projects. As they map the sprawling isoscape, tracking the atomic signature of the watershed, they also change it. They are landscape makers in every sense. @cynthiahooper.bsky.social on how CA can once again be a “salmon state”:

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I used to write little reviews of drinking fountains, and a couple years ago I wrote about their history: placesjournal.org/article/drin... These mighty “marble” contraptions, in the Madison building of the LoC, are 🌟. Superb water pressure and arc!

submitted 35 days ago • 5 comments

"Parts of Washington, D.C. give the impression of a campus...and like everyone else on campus, I was majoring in power. I desired the power to create reality. This is what came to mind when someone asked me what I thought of D.C. This is what I would've told them if I were a more courageous person."

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

"The fundamental mandate of the executive branch is nothing less than the project management of the United States...The more we impoverish the public sphere of mutual benefit, the more we rely on the unpredictable patronage of an unelected elite." Published in 2019, this remains relevant as ever 🔽

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

"The fundamental mandate of the executive branch is nothing less than the project management of the United States...The more we impoverish the public sphere of mutual benefit, the more we rely on the unpredictable patronage of an unelected elite." Published in 2019, this remains relevant as ever 🔽

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

“If the Trump administration can install flunkies in positions at every level of the executive branch, it’s because we‘ve never paid enough attention to all the functions government performs,” Nancy Levinson wrote in 2019. “Our ignorance, or inattention, has enabled Donald Trump.” From the archive:

submitted 42 days ago • 1 comment

More than most cities, Washington D.C. is attuned to the quadrennial changing of the guard. For Places, Tope Folarin writes about D.C. beyond partisan politics — a city where a Nigerian-American writer, hungry for a career in art & policy, found himself. Your post-inauguration counterprogramming:

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A wildfire reading list 🧵

submitted 49 days ago • 3 comments

A wildfire reading list 🧵

submitted 49 days ago • 3 comments

"I desired the power to create reality. And this is what came to mind whenever someone asked me what I thought of Washington, D.C. This is what I would have told them if I were a more courageous person." A portrait of the nation's capital, from Nigerian-American writer & D.C. resident Tope Folarin.

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"I began to think of Washington not simply as the capital, the part of the country where power gathered and magnified itself, but as a synecdoche for America. How could a single city hope to capture such staggering multifariousness? I knew it wasn’t possible, yet found the effort worthy of praise."

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Lots of interesting and important scholars, journalists, activists & thinkers here. Thank you to Brent for the curation!

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

Ambitious literature and public policy are each concerned with shaping reality. Perhaps no place embodies the power of artists & policymakers to arrange space & time more persuasively than Washington, D.C. For "An Unfinished Atlas," Tope Folarin writes about his search for prose, politics & power.

submitted 50 days ago • 1 comment

As we begin a new year, we’re deeply grateful that so many have contributed to our annual fundraising campaign. We’ll share that we haven’t quite reached our goal, so we hope you’ll consider making a donation to help support another year of journalism & public scholarship on the built environment.

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

It’s not too late to donate! Your support will help us continue to publish trustworthy public scholarship and public-interest journalism on architecture, landscape, and cities. Donate $100 (or more), and we’ll send you your very own Places tote bag. Carry it with pride!

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

"Packages are not just commodities." Today's article pick from Damn History, a free monthly newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to writer @shannonmattern.bsky.social & @placesjournal.bsky.social! Subscribe to Damn History: buff.ly/3CqxZ0z placesjournal.org/article/soci...

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Help make 2025 the year of independent nonprofit journals! As we look ahead to another year of public scholarship on the built environment, your support will help ensure everything we publish continues to appear on our website free to all — no ads, no paywalls. With gratitude from us at Places.

submitted 69 days ago • 0 comments

The field of repair, expanding traditionally understood processes of preservation or conservation, is going to radically alter our understanding of (re)development in my lifetime.

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

"MAPPING MALCOLM draws a map for transforming the tropes of architectural historiography." —Charles L. Davis II, Places Journal https://buff.ly/3ZMbs6j @placesjournal.bsky.social

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments