Palaces for the People
Eric Klinenberg
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Palaces for the People
Eric Klinenberg
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces. He is not the first to use the term 'social infrastructure,' but he gives it a new and useful definition as 'the physical conditions that determine whether social capital develops,' whether, that is, human connection and relationships are fostered. Then he presents examples intended to prove that social infrastructure represents the key to safety and prosperity in 21st-century urban America.
...Klinenberg, an optimist, tells heartwarming stories of abandoned lots in Englewood, Chicago, that have been converted to agriculture, of 'geriatric parks' in Spain, complete with age-appropriate play equipment, of measures in Singapore to help people of different generations know one another.
Sociologist Klinenberg discerns a critical and overlooked source of many of America’s ills, from inequality to political polarization and social fragmentation: the deterioration of the nation’s social infrastructure. From parks and playgrounds to churches and cafés, social infrastructure encompasses 'the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact.'.
Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, began his career in Chicago and his first book Heatwave explored the role social bonds played in explaining why the 1995 heatwave affected some Chicagoans more severely than others. He has since published studies on 'solo living' and dating that similarly worry about the fate of social ties in the modern world. Palaces of the People represents a more ambitious work, championing the importance of what Klinenberg calls 'social infrastructure' to our individual and collective wellbeing.
Klinenberg... has written a paean to libraries, parks, playgrounds and other public spaces, but he is unable to keep the bleaker realities of urban (and, unusually, suburban) life out of his would-be-inspiring 'Aren’t Cities great?' narrative. What are clearly meant to be instructive just-so stories and heartwarming anecdotes are often much more grim and upsetting than he seems to think they are.
It’s been a long time since the American engineering community gave a higher grade than a D to the country’s infrastructure. By Klinenberg’s account, there are other benefits to infrastructure besides simply getting us where we want to go safely and allowing our toilets to flush. What he calls 'social infrastructure,' for instance, provides us with physical spaces where we can gather to solve problems and simply be together: Churches, libraries, public swimming pools, and the like are important centers of community-building and social cohesion. It is telling that public enterprises such as libraries and low-income child care are in a state of collapse thanks to our apparent dislike for paying taxes to support them; private enterprises that provide 'third spaces,' neither home nor work but somewhere in between, are doing better and 'help produce the material foundations for social life.'.
Sociologist Klinenberg presents an illuminating examination of 'social infrastructure,' the physical spaces and organizations that shape the way people interact. Touring libraries, playgrounds, churches, barbershops, cafés, athletic fields, and community gardens, Klinenberg identifies the ways such spaces help prevent crime, reduce addiction rates, contribute to economic growth, and even ameliorate problems caused by climate change.