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Thursday, March 03, 2011

Places: An Online Journal of Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism

I am a fan of Newgeography, the economical geography online magazine.  It combines a good presentation with hard hitting, interesting, relevant articles on geography.  Sadly it seemed Newgeography was a rare gem out there.

I thought Newgeography was the only online geography magazine of its kind until I was contacted by the staff of Places.  Places is the online continuation of the published academic journal Places which was in print until 2009.  The journal sees itself as a "journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism, with particular emphasis on the public realm as physical place and social ideal."  This definition fits it well into the field of geography in the tradition of people like Peirce Lewis.

Many of the articles have a sort of National Geographic-quality to them as photos weave themselves well in a symbiotic relationship with the essays.  In between my adventures in rural Afghanistan I have read Ecologies of Gold: The Past and Future Mining Landscapes of Johannesburg, Tahrir Square: Social Media, Public Space, and Writing on the Wall.

I really like the open-source access Places gives to the average reader (unlike some published geography journals which have high subscription/article fees and are unreadable expect for those already well literate in academicese).

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