Sick Space: A Letter from the Editors BY JIAE AZAD + ASHER KAPLAN SPRING 2021 Dear reader, There is no single, overarching account of life under pandemic conditions. As of this writing, the pandemic’s many overlapping zones of crisis and recovery continue to shift along boundaries largely determined by precedent geographies of exploitation and domination.
Community Vitality in a Valley of Environmental Justice: Urban Landscape Architecture in a Brazilian Grota BY SAM VALENTINE June 11, 2020 This article was originally published on the website of Topos Magazine. You can find it here. Maybe it overshot the runway. As I walked the narrow cobblestone street of this low-lying village in northeastern Brazil,
Views of 14th St. on Thu., October 4, 2019, the day that the 14th Street Busway went into effect, speeding trips for customers aboard the M14-SBS bus route. Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit A Green New Deal for Transportation BY EMILY KENNEDY June 15, 2021 The transportation sector is the
Image by Elisa Rolle Detroit: Decay, Displacement, and Exploitation BY JACK SCHULTE June 30, 2021 On July 18, 2013 the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, the largest municipal Chapter 9 filing in American history. Detroit’s bankruptcy marked the culmination of a drawn-out fiscal struggle for the city. After many years of chronic financial and
Image by Fangyuan Sheng Water Miner: Plant Cultivation and Water Conservation Project 5.0 BY MINGYANG SUN & FANYUAN SHENG June 21, 2021 By 2025, frequent extreme weather and air pollution made Johannesburg’s surface no longer suitable for human habitation. As a result, residents used advanced engineering technology to develop the subterranean structure of the
Image by Julián Huertas The Case of the Incomprehensible Stadium BY JULIÁN HUERTAS June 15, 2021 This graphic novel manifesto is the result of a Summer 2020 independent study with Dr. Ann Forsyth. I broadly studied and researched the complexities of land use regulation, economic development, public-private development, and models of social, racial, and gender equity
Morality as a Cure: Catholicism and Working-Class Housing in Early 20th Century Colombia BY JUAN SEBASTIAN MORENO "The priests shall teach the ignorant peasant, the informal worker, the unclean poor, the selfish chieftain, that moral and physical perfection will not be reached if cleanliness and order in the rooms and in the people are neglected."
Artwork BY KAY LEE June 15, 2021 cuckooland (small), acrylic on canvas, 36x48 wissahickon, 2020, gouache on paper, 11_x14_ wetland, graphite on panel, 20_x16_ (1) Kay Lee is a second-year MFA student at the University of Pennsylvania. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Kay explores her identity, discomforts, and traumas as a young, non-binary Asian in
Photo by Mingjia Chen & Diana Guo Floating Between Borders BY DIANA GUO AND MINGJIA CHEN June 15, 2021 Cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove treats the modern airport as a poetic metaphor exemplifying the modern world’s unboundedness, flexibility, and mobility. For him, the constant flow of travelers represents a modern global interchange that cuts across both
Illustration by Thomas J Gamble American Warehouse: DIY Undergrounds and Urban Displacement BY SEAN J PATRICK CARNEY June 15, 2021 Empty Warehouses Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, experimental venues proliferated in cavernous, disused factories and warehouses from Providence to Oakland, Chicago to New Orleans, and Baltimore to Seattle. These collectively organized DIY (do-it-yourself) spaces furnished non-professional
Photo by Jarrodd Davis The Comorbidities of Urban Space: The Price is Right BY JARRODD DAVIS June 11, 2021 Over/Under Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood and scores of similar neighborhoods – formerly overlooked, underinvested, oversaturated with poverty, and underestimated – have long been forced to react to the mechanisms of racial capitalism. The systematic undervaluing of
A piece of a tree that was demolished during the 'Deprimido Mixcoac' construction. Photo by Irma Olivo. The Desnivel Insurgentes-Mixcoac Protests: Clean Air, Citizenship, and Middle-Class Participation in a Mexico City Urban Planning Project BY ARON LESSER June 20, 2021 In June of 2015, a group of retired women tied themselves to their neighborhoods’ largest
Poisoned Prisons BY DIANA DROGARIS June 20, 2021 Since its heyday of the early-to-mid 20th century, Appalachia’s coal economy has all but evaporated. A combination of advances in coal extraction technologies, the fall of natural gas prices, and imperfect but efficiaous environmental regulations have led to a steep decline in coal-related employment and investment; remote
