About The Author
Anne Mackin was born and grew up in a time and place of suburban expansion--the Washington, D.C. suburbs of the 1950s--and has been thinking about how Americans design and use their land ever since. The question of how Americans distribute land began to occupy her at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she took a master’s degree in landscape architecture and planning. Since then, and even while working as a planner for Massachusetts fresh out of grad school--she has been writing about these topics, sometimes in collaboration with other planners, usually in an effort to understand--or help the public understand--the forces that shape our landscape and the landscape that shapes our lives. This effort led to a study of the history of the relationship between Americans and Their Land.
Over the years, Anne’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Landscape Architecture, and other periodicals, and in planning guidebooks aimed at local officials and sponsored by national and state arts and environmental agencies, She lives in Boston with her husband, Alex Krieger, professor of urban design and planning at Harvard, and their two children.
photo by Genevieve DeManio
