The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places

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

MIT Press, 2024

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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.

MIT Press, 2024

This project has been supported by The Puffin Foundation, Ltd., Humanities New York, and Citizens Committee for New York City.

Praise for the book

“In her new book, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani reveals the warm humanity that animates city blocks, corner stores, park benches, and casual neighborly nods. Most importantly, she knows that cities are essential because of the people in them and the mix of relationships, care, emotions, needs, and 101 reciprocities that they make in community with one another every day. These are the great urban stories we need and deserve.”

Kemi Ilesanmi Former Executive Director, The Laundromat Project

“There's a tenderness about this book that leaps off the page. Reading it, we can't help but feel that we are becoming better human beings. It is a book to savor, a feast for your eyes and heart. And what's more: it shows us how to make the cities we need. This book will speak to everyone, and most of all to those of us that want to create cities in which we can all prosper.”

Mindy Thompson Fullilove author of Root Shock: & Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All

“The Cities We Need offers a new kind of urban history, weaving together archival research, oral histories, autobiography, and daydreams…This book sets a new bar for holistic urban research.”

Places Journal Karen Kubey

"Meditative and deeply researched, piercingly provocative as the author probes the underlying issues that often threaten cherished places, but also affectingly personal via the words of the tour guides, The Cities We Need might just be the book you need right now for many examples and doses of everyday joy and community."

Civil Engineering Magazine

"Each of the nine chapters is a rich feast of story, observation, analysis, and experiential impact – and of course, there are Bendiner-Viani’s photographs, displayed most effectively. She aptly cites the work of many authors, researchers and practitioners. Most moving and impactful are the recollections and assertions of the residents themselves; in describing her moments with her guides, she also recounts the unfolding of her own awareness, which is also our own as we follow down the sidewalks and into the parks with her."

On the Seawall Ron Slate

"Between the stories shared by residents from opposite coasts are photo essays of the two neighborhoods. They show the beauty of everyday life, but also work as an archive of places that have disappeared. … The Cities We Need is structured around simple, personal stories, but they work in service of a larger narrative about what these places mean to their residents and what kind of city people want to live in."

BK Reader New Book Explores The Sacred Everyday Places of Brooklyn

"'The Cities We Need' is a book we need to remind us that personal well-being should be a crucial measure of a city’s success and deserves the same kind of consideration as more quantifiable factors like economic investment or population stability...Bendiner-Viani has used her camera, along with her prose, to hold up a mirror that reflects back to us a city that we should, but do not always, want to see. 'The Cities We Need' reminds us that the most intimate of experiences—on the block or in the corner store—is what makes urban life special and helps urban dwellers feel emotionally fulfilled as human beings.”

Journal of Urban Affairs Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University

"The photo of the diner is carefully set on the cover; it’s centered in a clean, jewel-tone case, like a precious keepsake in a memory box… The photographs offer readers a moment to pause and reflect, while the text offers detail and richness to the story. Bendiner-Viani wanted the book to reflect the various rhythms of existing within, thinking about, or looking at cities. The overall effect of this care spent on interior design is that of a slow walk through a beloved neighborhood, alongside someone who knows every nook and cranny and feels a sense of belonging and community there."

The Cover Story The MIT Press

In the media

The Cities We Need book tour & signings

2025

February 1, 2025, 4pm, NEW YORK, NY
The Fountain Bookshop, 803 W. 187th Street
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani talks about The Cities We Need at uptown’s newest bookshop, followed by a Q&A and book signing

September 16, 2025, 12pm ET, VIRTUAL
The New York Preservation League Book Club :: Register here!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani talks about The Cities We Need and its connection to community preservation followed by a Q&A

October 15, 2025, pm, NEW YORK, NY
New York Public Library Stavros Niarchos Foundation, 7 Stories Up
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani and Prithi Kanakamedala in conversation about their books The Cities We Need and Brooklynites and about what it means to build freedom and belonging in place, followed by a Q&A and book signing. Register and join us!

October 29, 2025, 12pm ET, VIRTUAL
Cities @ Tufts :: Register here!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani talks about The Cities We Need at Tufts University’s series of urban thought leaders

Be in touch to bring Gabrielle & The Cities We Need to your neighborhood, bookshop, organization, or school: info [at] buscada.com

2024

September 7, 2024, 2:30pm, NEW YORK, NY
International Center of Photography & PhotoBook Fest :: Watch it!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with artist Ariana Allensworth & curator Jodi Waynberg

September 10, 2024, 7pm, BROOKLYN, NY
Unnameable Books :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with historian Julia Foulkes

September 19, 2024, 6:30-8pm, NEW YORK, NY
Public Scholarship Practice Space, Center for Humanities, The CUNY Graduate Center :: Watch the recording!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with interdisciplinary researcher Judy Pryor-Ramirez & historian Prithi Kanakamedala

September 24, 2024, 7pm, SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Green Apple Books :: Watch the recording!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with artist Susan Schwartzenberg

September 25, 2024, 6pm, BERKELEY, CA
Books Inc :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with photographer Janet Delaney

October 2, 2024, 6-8pm, NEW YORK, NY
MAS Book Talks at Housing Works Bookshop :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with psychologist Mindy Thompson Fullilove

October 8, 2024, 6:30pm, BROOKLYN, NY
Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Public Library :: Watch it!
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with arts strategist and curator Kemi Ilesanmi

October 17, 2024, 6-8pm, QUEENS, NY
Socrates Sculpture Park :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with Socrates Sculpture Park co-Executive Director Katie Dixon

October 24, 2024, 7pm, NEW YORK, NY
Word Up Books @ Recirculation :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with Word Up founder Veronica Santiago Liu

October 29, 2024, 6:30-8pm, BROOKLYN, NY
The Laundromat Project :: Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani in conversation with Laundromat Project Executive Director Ayesha Williams and Bed Stuy Restoration Executive Director Blondel Pinnock

December 10, 2024, 12-1pm EST, VIRTUAL
Untapped Cities :: Watch the recording!