The Cities We Need Essential Stories of Everyday Places

by Bendiner-Viani, Gabrielle

• ISBN13: 9780262049030
• ISBN10: 0262049031
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780262379366
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-08-27
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• More Book Details

Summary

An expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging.

Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need, photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the complex, political, and eminently personable stories of residents who answered this question in Brooklyn, New York, and Oakland, California. Their universal stories and Bendiner-Viani’s evocative images illuminate what’s at stake in our everyday places—from diners to churches to donut shops. In this culmination of two decades of research and art practice, Bendiner-Viani intertwines the personal, historical, and photographic to present us with placework, the way that unassuming places foster a sense of belonging and, in fact, do the essential work of helping us become communities.

In this unique book, Bendiner-Viani makes visible how seemingly unimportant places can lay the foundation for a functional interconnected society, so necessary for both public health and social justice. The Cities We Need explores both what we gain in these spaces and what we risk losing as they are threatened by gentrification, large-scale development, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, Bendiner-Viani shows us how to understand ourselves as part of a shared society, with a shared fate; she shows us that everyday places can be the spaces of liberation in which we can build the cities we need.

Author Biography

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani is a visual urbanist and cofounder of the interdisciplinary studio Buscada. She is the author of Contested City, a finalist and honoree for the Brendan Gill Award. A widely exhibited photographer, she holds a doctorate in environmental psychology from the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Social Distance
1 Placework
Mosswood Portfolio One
Becoming Yourself
2 Feeling Free and Being Valued
Prospect Heights Portfolio One
3 I Be All Over
Mosswood Portfolio Two
4 Landing Someplace Safe
Prospect Heights Portfolio Two
5 Probably the Supermarket
Mosswood Portfolio Three
Becoming Community
6 Enduring Talk and Casual Talk
Prospect Heights Portfolio Three
7 Every Thursday
Mosswood Portfolio Four
8 Where Are You Able to Connect?
Prospect Heights Portfolio Four
9 The City We Want
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography