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Palaces for the People
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Palaces for the People

How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

Eric Klinenberg
Crown, 2019
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Visionary
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Contending with crises such as climate change requires collaboration and shared purpose, but today’s society is fragmented. Professor Eric Klinenberg recommends a solution based on “social infrastructure” – shared public spaces such as libraries, parks, and coffee shops. His examples include a Houston church that became a hurricane shelter and formerly dangerous vacant lots that Chicagoans transformed into urban farms. Klinenberg believes such places and organizations provide the “social glue” that holds communities together. His entertaining, optimistic study summarizes the condition of the world’s social infrastructure and describes innovative ways to improve, expand, and maintain it.

Summary

“Social infrastructure” is essential to the health of a community.

Countries across the world are contending with a fraying of the social ties that strengthen communities. Increasingly, people – especially the elderly – live in isolation, while others join factions according to their class, ethnicity, or political ideology. Efforts to generate “social capital” – a community’s web of individual relationships and social networks – often focus on the ripple effects of voluntary organizations, such as bowling leagues, gardening clubs, and book clubs.

An area’s buildings and public spaces constitute a social infrastructure that is as significant to the community’s well-being as its “hard infrastructure” like roads and utilities. Social infrastructure encompasses parks, libraries, and coffee shops – places where people socialize and volunteer organizations meet. These facilities support the casual, everyday interactions that strengthen social bonds. 

Public libraries are crucial components of social infrastructure.

Libraries offer a free, open place to congregate. Parents...

About the Author

Eric Klinenberg is Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is also the research director for Rebuild by Design.

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