Gabrielle Bruney Chosen for “Writing the City” 2024

We’re excited to announce that Gabrielle Bruney has been chosen as the latest recipient of the “Writing the City” award, an ongoing collaboration between Places and Columbia Journalism School to support ambitious works of urban journalism.

Bruney will focus on benches in New York City as a way to explore the “ambivalence around seating, one of the essential amenities offered in public spaces” — and, more broadly, the contested history and politics of public things in this fractious time. “Benches are integral to plazas, parks, bus stops, and subway stations,” Bruney writes. “They render cities more accessible to older people and those with disabilities, and offer respite from the productivity, consumption, and constant movement mandated by urban life. Yet benches are also often suspect.”

Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bruney graduated from the M.A. program in Arts and Culture at Columbia Journalism School in 2015. She’s previously worked for Jezebel, Esquire, and Vice.

“Writing the City” offers graduates of Columbia Journalism School the opportunity to write a deeply researched and reported work of long-form journalism on a topic that might otherwise receive scant attention. Bruney describes this opportunity as both “rare and exciting.” Seeded by a grant from Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, the award is now funded by the Columbia Journalism School, thanks to a generous pledge of $40,000 last year.

Previous “Writing the City” recipients include Sam Bloch, whose pioneering essay, “Shade,” analyzed shade as a public resource and critical consideration in urban planning; and Cheree Franco, who chronicled government neglect of Lincoln Beach in New Orleans in “The City’s Beach, Run by the People.”