Ben Barsotti Scott

I’m a writer and landscape architect based in New York City. I’m also a student of historical geography, currently researching a series of civilian-led blockades of US Navy terminals in the final years of the US war in Vietnam.

Occasionally, I teach undergraduate seminars on my areas of interest: see the syllabus for my 2022 course on contemporary architectural theory here and the syllabus for my 2025 course on critical cartography here. Read testimonials from some of my recent students here.

Even more occasionally, I write for architecture and geography publications like the the New York Review of Architecture, Critical Planning Journal, and Journal of Landscape Architecture.

You can see my full CV here and you can contact me here.

Ben Barsotti Scott
urban historical geographer and independent curator in New York, NY.

See some of my recent work below. You can contact me here.

“Citizen Scientist 1 Returns”
2023︎︎︎2026

RESEARCH

An essay on waste, reclamation, and settler aesthetics in Newtown Odyssey.

Following my review of Newtown Odyssey: An open-air opera for, about, and on a creek for the New York Review of Architecture, I conducted interviews with the opera’s composer and librettist. Those interviews informed my article “Citizen Scientist 1 Returns,” which looks at one of the opera’s characters, an unnamed citizen scientist studying the remediation of the most polluted waterway in North America, as a paranoid figure of settler colonization. Forthcoming Spring 2027 in LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture.