Cities We Need

The Cities We Need pairs prose with photography to show how ordinary neighborhood places hold communities together. Photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani built the book around a simple question she put to residents of Brooklyn, New York and Oakland, California: where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood?

The answers become personal, political and often warm stories, set in places such as diners, churches and donut shops. Drawing on two decades of research and art practice, Bendiner-Viani weaves together personal accounts, local history and her own images to describe what she calls placework: the way modest, unremarkable places foster belonging and, in doing so, help turn groups of people into communities.

She argues that these places lay the groundwork for an interconnected society, which matters for public health and social justice alike. The book looks at what people gain from such spaces and at what is at risk as gentrification, large-scale development and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic put them under threat. Its larger aim is to help readers see themselves as part of a shared society with a shared fate, and to treat everyday places as spaces of liberation where the cities we need can be built.