Haunted houses are benign. If you want real evil, suggests Keith Eggener, look to the sentient houses in fiction and film that are "born bad". From Poe to Siddons, he explores examples of "architecture gone terribly wrong".
"There is within American literature and cinema a subgenre of horror focused on buildings, buildings that are themselves the sources of evil, without ghosts or ghouls, but which, through some flaw of design — some peculiar arrangement of space and mass, some technology gone awry [1] — manifest a malign awareness that targets occupants," observes Eggener.
Authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Anne Rivers Siddons, "take us . . . to a place where buildings are not just alive, but aware and willful — like us, but not quite. Built on bad ground or bad foundations, literal or figurative, the houses of their stories are like psychoanalytic subjects whose dark, submerged dream worlds have surfaced and taken over, wreaking havoc all around."
FULL STORY: When Buildings Kill
The Trust for Historic Preservation’s ‘Most Haunted’ Hotels of 2024
Looking for a historically creepy place to spend Halloween? Check out these haunted properties.
Contested Property: Haunted Houses and the Anxiety of Ownership in America
Sometimes home becomes a place of fear for the least supernatural reasons.
What Abandoned Places Teach Us
Abandoned cities and other forsaken human-built sites are haunted by the mistakes city leaders and builders have made over centuries.
Maui's Vacation Rental Debate Turns Ugly
Verbal attacks, misinformation campaigns and fistfights plague a high-stakes debate to convert thousands of vacation rentals into long-term housing.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
In Urban Planning, AI Prompting Could be the New Design Thinking
Creativity has long been key to great urban design. What if we see AI as our new creative partner?
Massachusetts Budget Helps Close MBTA Budget Gap
The budget signed by Gov. Maura Healey includes $470 million in MBTA funding for the next fiscal year.
Milwaukee Launches Vision Zero Plan
Seven years after the city signed its Complete Streets Policy, the city is doubling down on its efforts to eliminate traffic deaths.
Portland Raises Parking Fees to Pay for Street Maintenance
The city is struggling to bridge a massive budget gap at the Bureau of Transportation, which largely depleted its reserves during the Civd-19 pandemic.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Gallatin County Department of Planning & Community Development
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
JM Goldson LLC
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Jefferson Parish Government
Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Claremont