Places Journal

Tickets are still available! Doors open at 5:00 PM tonight. 🌳

HAPPENING TONIGHT: If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, come join us at the @cwclub.bsky.social for an important conversation on SHADE, with journo @samkbloch.bsky.social!

Bloch’s new book, “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource,” expands on an article published in Places in 2019.

Places author @samkbloch.bsky.social is speaking tomorrow @cwclub.bsky.social in San Francisco, about his new book, “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Resource.”

Come for a conversation on the natural and social histories of shade — and how to change the way we think about this critical resource.

July 2025 Newsletter: Public goods underpin democracy Plus, more of the latest longform public scholarship from Places Journal. Sign up today. It's free!

In our July newsletter:

From @timothyaschuler.bsky.social: Hantz Woodlands in Detroit offers an example of what we lose when private gain trumps public interest.

And @slaydok.bsky.social talks w/ @pauldobraszczyk.bsky.social & Joyce Hwang about designing for and with animals.

+ more Places news!

"To the list of environmental injustices in this country, we can add unequal distribution of shade," Bloch wrote in 2019. "Shade is often understood as a luxury amenity...We have to see it as a civic resource shared by all."

Years later, his words are as critical as ever.

(Read Bloch's new book!)

A New Book on Shade by Sam Bloch This week marks the release of Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource, a new book by Sam Bloch that expands on an article published in Places in 2019.

You might remember an article by @samkbloch.bsky.social we published in 2019, about SHADE. At the time, few other journalists had identified shade as an environmental & civic resource in itself.

This week, Bloch's new book, "Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource,” hits the shelves!

A New Book on Shade by Sam Bloch This week marks the release of Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource, a new book by Sam Bloch that expands on an article published in Places in 2019.

On our to-do list this evening:

1. Buy @samkbloch.bsky.social’s book, “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource," OUT NOW!

2. (Re)read his 2019 Places essay, “Shade,” the definitive account of the value of shade as a civic resource

3. Learn more about the role of shade in urban design 🌳

This article was transformative for me, and now I guess I gotta buy the book. Not really tl;dr-able but one takeaway is that people in cities kvetching about new buildings casting shadows are usually being silly.

placesjournal.org/article/shad...

Here's @samkbloch.bsky.social's essay, which remains an essential work on an increasingly critical (and often overlooked) natural resource: placesjournal.org/article/shad...

And here's his brand-new book, which we encourage you to read and share! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672379...

A New Book on Shade by Sam Bloch This week marks the release of <em>Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource</em>, a new book by Sam Bloch that expands on an article published in <em>Places</em> in 2019.

OUT TODAY: “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource” by @samkbloch.bsky.social.

The book, published by Random House, expands on an article Bloch wrote for Places in 2019, which has since become a definitive account of the value of shade as a civic resource and a mandate for urban design.

Recommendations from the Archive: July 2025 A monthly selection of articles from the Places archive, recommended by the editors.

We’re launching a brand-new newsletter dispatch: essays from the Places archive, handpicked for you by us, the editors. Every month, we’ll share writing that adds depth & dimension to current issues, as well as stories we find gratifying to read (and reread).

Here are July's pages from the archive.

Animal Architecture: In Conversation An animal studies scholar talks with an architect and an architecture writer about designing for, and with, nonhuman species.

“We have a responsibility to think about a future where we’re not centered; there’s an optimism in that. Human beings are irresponsible. If I think about us controlling everything in the future, that feels sad.” —Joyce Hwang

IN CONVERSATION w/ @slaydok.bsky.social & @pauldobraszczyk.bsky.social:

Jess Myers Wins SAH | Places | Graham Foundation Prize Blending sound studies, geography, and urbanism, Myers' essay and lecture will focus on the spatial politics of urban listening.

We're pleased to announce that Jess Myers has been awarded the 2025 @sah1365.bsky.social | Places | Graham Foundation Prize on Race and the Built Environment.

Blending sound studies, geography & urbanism, Myers will produce a work of public scholarship on “the spatial politics of urban listening."

In 1966, Compton’s Cafeteria became a landmark of resistance to police oppression; today, the building is owned by a prison operator.

"What would it take to liberate this storefront from occupation by a corporation that confines people for profit?"

Here's Susan Stryker, from the PLACES archive:

My conversation with @pauldobraszczyk.bsky.social and Joyce Hwang about animal architecture is now out in @placesjournal.bsky.social! Always a pleasure to chat with these two 🤩

As part of our In Conversation series, anthropologist @slaydok.bsky.social spoke with architecture writer @pauldobraszczyk.bsky.social & practitioner/researcher Joyce Hwang about their visions for a discipline that regards nonhuman animals as subjects of human design — and sometimes vice versa. 🦊

Animal Architecture: In Conversation An animal studies scholar talks with an architect and an architecture writer about designing for, and with, nonhuman species.

How splendid is this! A gorgeous piece in Places, where I chat with architect Joyce Hwang and anthropologist Richard Fadok about animals and architecture

placesjournal.org/article/anim...

In “Animal Architecture,” anthropologist @slaydok.bsky.social speaks with architecture writer @pauldobraszczyk.bsky.social and practitioner/researcher Joyce Hwang about designing for, and with, nonhuman species.

What if the boundaries of architecture are actually much more porous than we think?

Animal Architecture: In Conversation An animal studies scholar talks with an architect and an architecture writer about designing for, and with, nonhuman species.

Architects don’t just design for humans. They design, intentionally or not, for all of the nonhuman species affected by human-built structures. Western architecture has long been a driver of ecological destruction: How can we build to accommodate other species as cohabitants of a shared environment?

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

Loved reading this rich (Detroit-centered), insightful story: it has a shout out to my book, Public Things, & puts it into a conversation that is rich & important: “We ultimately lose so much more than an acre-or 500 or 5 million-when public lands are devalued and reduced to financial assets” /1

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

A timely read for this holiday weekend.

Let’s not forget that public things — lands, resources, institutions, agencies dedicated to providing and protecting public goods — are foundational to American democracy.

“We should hold onto them with all our power,” writes our landscape critic.

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

"We cannot create value until we create scarcity," or so believes one wealthy entrepreneur who, after the 2008 crash, bought an entire neighborhood in Detroit.

"The opposite of scarcity is abundance," writes
@timothyaschuler.bsky.social for Places. "Abundance must be a collective, public project."

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

The libertarian withdrawal from civil society is often imagined as a quest for freedom. In fact, it's a search for control, which at the societal scale is tyranny. We might cheer the retreat of space colonists, if not for the fact that the wealth used to construct their private worlds belongs to us.

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

We are living in a new gilded age, @timothyaschuler.bsky.social writes. Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American public of the things we hold in common.

"We should hold onto them with all our power." 🗣️

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

What does landscape have to do with democracy?

"When public lands are devalued, we lose our shared heritage. We lose potential futures. We lose the mechanisms by which we participate in and imagine democracy."

@timothyaschuler.bsky.social defends public things as the underpinnings of civic life:

"Land grab is too quaint a term for what we are witnessing. The public domain is being looted. Indeed, the very idea of a public realm is under attack."

In defense of public things, the underpinnings of our democracy:

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

From @timothyaschuler.bsky.social, a critique of the thieves who threaten to rob us of the things we hold in common.

“We might cheer the retreat of seasteaders and space colonists from civil society, if not for the fact that the wealth used to construct their private worlds belongs to us.” (3/3)

Today's billionaires & technofascists are pulling a similar con on the American people, says @timothyaschuler.bsky.social, only now, "land grab" is too quaint a term for what we're witnessing.

"The public domain is being looted," he writes. "The very idea of a public realm is under attack." (2/3)

Aerial views of plots of land in East Detroit.

After the 2008 housing market crash, financial executive John Hantz acquired thousands of mostly vacant properties in Detroit, purportedly to construct the world’s "largest urban farm." In reality, his company quietly sold hundreds of these properties, generating sales of millions of dollars. (1/3)

Private Worlds Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.

The latest from @timothyaschuler.bsky.social is a critique of the thieves who threaten to rob us of what we hold in common.

“We might cheer the retreat of seasteaders and space colonists from civil society, if not for the fact that the wealth used to construct their private worlds belongs to us.”