Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society

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America in the 'aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the country's most prominent social critics Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other…. In case after case, we learn how socially-minded design matters…. Anyone interested in cities will find this book an engaging survey that trains you to view any shared physical system as, among other things, a kind of social network.”— The New York Times Book Review Trying to engineer hot weather out of existence rather than adjust our culture of consumption for the age of climate change is one of our biggest environmental blind spots. If you can’t stand the heat, you should know that blasting the AC will ultimately make us all even hotter. Let’s put our air conditioners on ice before it’s too late. www.oecd-forum.org Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

The key differentiator between similar neighborhoods was the social infrastructure---physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact---convening and relationship building spaces. Libraries are at the core of social infrastructure. There's a term you don't hear these days, one you used to hear all the time when the Carnegie branches opened: Palaces for the People. The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who otherwise couldn't afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And you know, they need other people to recognize it in them too.” Harvard Kennedy School Social Capital Toolkit,” (tiny.cc/socialcapitaltoolkit): A resource providing information about social capital and how it encourages development in communities.And yet there is the American public library standing in direct contradiction of that ideology. When Andrew Carnegie wanted to bring self-education to the masses, how did he do it? He did not just scatter his money. He entered into a quid pro quo arrangement with local governments: if I build it, you must make sure they come. Years later, when Bill Gates wanted to do something similar with the potential of the Internet, he did a similar thing with local governments and their libraries: if I enable connectivity, you must maintain it. Klinenberg writes, “In coming decades, the world’s most affluent societies will invest trillions of dollars on new infrastructure—seawalls, smart grids, basins for capturing rainwater—that can withstand twenty-first century challenges, including megastorms like Harvey and Irma” (187). What opportunities arise for the development of social infrastructure alongside increased spending on physical infrastructure? How did the winning projects in the Rebuild by Design competition following Hurricane Sandy, for which Klinenberg served as research director, integrate social infrastructure? In what ways does the incorporation of social infrastructure into these projects potentially affect the community before, during, and after megastorms and natural disasters? In Bangladesh, the “floating schools and libraries” program was implemented by a nonprofit. What level of responsibility for innovative programs such as this falls to the government, to citizens, or to nonprofits? What are the best means by which to affect innovative changes in one’s community? Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How to Build a More Equal and United Society, (Bodley Head, 2018) The aim of this sweeping work is to popularize the notion of ‘social infrastructure'—the ‘physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact'. . . . Here, drawing on research in urban planning, behavioral economics, and environmental psychology, as well as on his own fieldwork from around the world, [Eric Klinenberg] posits that a community’s resilience correlates strongly with the robustness of its social infrastructure. The numerous case studies add up to a plea for more investment in the spaces and institutions (parks, libraries, childcare centers) that foster mutual support in civic life.” — The New Yorker PALACES FOR THE PEOPLE: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (2018) More

What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions, such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools, are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gar­dens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an estab­lished physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other con­sumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “third spaces,” places (like cafés, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they’ve pur­chased. Entrepreneurs typically start these kinds of businesses be­cause they want to generate income. But in the process, as close observers of the city such as Jane Jacobs and the Yale ethnographer Elijah Anderson have discovered, they help produce the material foundations for social life. […] modern infrastructure—for reliable power, clean water, fast transit, affordable food, and resilient structures—has done more to improve public health than any other modern intervention, including scientific medicine” I didn't think that I could dislike a book as much as I dislike THIS book, but yes, I really disliked this book. Wonderful ideas and some really interesting points but I do not trust ANY book which talks about race and sociology without talking about white privilege and white supremacy. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems this man wrote an entire book about community while NOT ONCE naming white supremacy. As a career public librarian, I often had this thought. Traditional conservatism of the kind that favored localism over centralization has morphed into an antipathy to government at all levels. This radical anti-civic ideology is what the "Reagan revolution" accomplished: spreading the belief that "government can do no good" at any level whatsoever.Libraries are not the kinds of institutions that most social scientists, policy makers, and community leaders usually bring up when they discuss social capital and how to build it. Since Tocqueville, most leading thinkers about social and civic life have extolled the value of voluntary associations like bowling leagues and gardening clubs without looking closely at the physical and material conditions that make people more or less likely to associate. But social infrastructure provides the setting and context for social participation, and the library is among the most critical forms of social infrastructure that we have. La inspiradora biografía de la ex Primera Dama de Estados Unidos, Michelle Obama, adaptada para jóvenes lectores An eminent sociologist and bestselling author offers an inspiring blueprint for rebuilding our fractured society.

Eric Klineberg is a Professor of Sociology at NYU and an author of several books. Palaces for People is how Andrew Carnegie described free public libraries when he generously donated funds to build over 2800 libraries across the nation. People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.”The systems we build in coming years will tell future generations who we are and how we see the world today. If we fail to bridge our gaping social divisions, they may even determine whether that “we” continues to exist. Today, nations around the world are poised to spend trillions of dollars on vital infrastructure projects that we need to get through the twenty- first century and beyond. Before we lift the next shovel, we should know what we want to improve, what we need to protect, and, more important, what kind of society we want to create for our post-COVID 19 world. At a time when polarization is weakening our democracy, Eric Klinenberg takes us on a tour of the physical spaces that bind us together and form the basis of civic life. We care about each other because we bump up against one another in a community garden or on the playground or at the library. These are not virtual experiences; they’re real ones, and they’re essential to our future. This wonderful book shows us how democracies thrive.” —Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die