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Is Placelessness the Cost of American Freedom?

If We Want to Nurture a Sense of Place in This Country, It Might Help to Know Why We Lost It To Begin With

By Gregory Rodriguez
April 28, 2014

Forty-four years ago—well before the advent of the contemporary mobile phone, Wi-Fi, and social media technology—fabled futurist Alvin Toffler predicted a “historic decline in the significance of place to human life.” He was right, of course. And no country has proven him more right than the United States.

Does America Need a Tahrir Square?

The U.S. Has Let the Public Square Become a Metaphor. That Can’t Be Good for Our Democracy.

People gather in Tahrir square to celebrate the anniversary of an attack on Israeli forces during the 1973 war, in Cairo

By Gregory Rodriguez
April 14, 2014

Maidan Square in Kiev. Taksim Square in Istanbul. Tahrir Square in Cairo. Recent democratic movements around the globe have risen, or crashed and burned, on the hard pavement of vast urban public squares. The media largely has focused on the role of social media technology in these movements.

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