Palaces for the People
How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
(Sprache: Englisch)
A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward. Jon Stewart
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A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward. Jon StewartNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Engaging. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review (Editors Choice)
We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together and find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done?
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed. Interweaving his own research with examples from around the globe, Klinenberg shows how social infrastructure is helping to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges. Richly reported and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People offers a blueprint for bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides.
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION
Just brilliant! Roman Mars, 99% Invisible
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
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life. The New Yorker
Palaces for the People the title is taken from the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie s description of the hundreds of libraries he funded is essentially a calm, lucid exposition of a centuries-old idea, which is really a furious call to action. New Statesman
Clear-eyed . . . fascinating. Psychology Today
Palaces for the People the title is taken from the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie s description of the hundreds of libraries he funded is essentially a calm, lucid exposition of a centuries-old idea, which is really a furious call to action. New Statesman
Clear-eyed . . . fascinating. Psychology Today
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Chapter OneA Place to Gather
It s a balmy Thursday morning in the New Lots neighborhood of East New York, Brooklyn, 70 degrees and sunny on the last day of March. The sidewalks have awakened. Small groups of middle-aged men banter outside bodegas and on stoops of the small, semidetached brick houses that are common in the area. Mothers and grandmothers push strollers and watch over preschool children who hop and skip and revel in the unseasonable warmth. It seems early for recess, but the schoolyards are buzzing. Traffic is light on the narrow residential streets, but occasionally someone honks, a motorcycle engine fires, a truck roars past.
Street life in East New York is busy, but not always congenial. The district is one of the poorest in New York City, with about half the residents living below the poverty line. It s also one of the most segregated. Nearly 95 percent of residents are black or Latino, and only 1 percent are white. Social scientists sometimes call East New York socially isolated, because its peripheral location and limited public transit options restrict access to opportunities in other parts of the city, while people who don t live there have little reason to visit and strong incentives to stay away.
The area is among the most violent neighborhoods in New York City, with especially high levels of homicide, felony assault, and sexual assault. Conditions like these are bad for everyone, but research shows that they re particularly treacherous for older, sick, and frail people, who are prone to hunkering down in their apartments and growing dangerously isolated when they live in inhospitable physical environments. That s not only what I observed in the Chicago heat wave; it s what social scientists who conduct large-scale studies of isolation have found as well.
Living in a place like East New York requires developing coping strategies, and for many residents, the more vulnerable older
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and younger ones in particular, the key is to find safe havens. As on every other Thursday morning this spring, today nine middle-aged and elderly residents who might otherwise stay home alone will gather in the basement of the neighborhood s most heavily used public amenity, the New Lots branch library.
At first glance, it s an uninviting facility. The run-down, two-story brown brick building is set back behind a wide sidewalk and bus stop, with a beige stone facade at the entry, a broken chain-link fence on one side and a small asphalt parking lot on the other. In recent years the city designated the library site African Burial Ground Square, because it sits atop a cemetery used to inter slaves and soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
The library is small, and it s already crowded despite the early hour and the good weather. There are two banks of computer terminals with Internet access on the first floor, and patrons, sometimes more than one, at every machine. There s a small display case holding photographs and short biographies of Nobel Prize winners; tall wooden bookshelves with new releases, atlases, and encyclopedias; an information desk with flyers promoting library events for toddlers, young readers, teens, parents, English-language students, and older patrons. One librarian asks if I need anything. Another stacks books.
I ask to see the second floor, and Edwin, a sweet and soft-spoken information supervisor, takes me upstairs. Here there are three separate universes. A designated children s space, which is worn but, Edwin says, about to get renovated; a set of tables for English-language courses, which are always oversubscribed; and, in the back, a classroom that serves as the library s Learning Center, a place where anyone over age seventeen who s reading below GED level can get special instruction, individually and in groups.
Everyone is welcome at the l
At first glance, it s an uninviting facility. The run-down, two-story brown brick building is set back behind a wide sidewalk and bus stop, with a beige stone facade at the entry, a broken chain-link fence on one side and a small asphalt parking lot on the other. In recent years the city designated the library site African Burial Ground Square, because it sits atop a cemetery used to inter slaves and soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
The library is small, and it s already crowded despite the early hour and the good weather. There are two banks of computer terminals with Internet access on the first floor, and patrons, sometimes more than one, at every machine. There s a small display case holding photographs and short biographies of Nobel Prize winners; tall wooden bookshelves with new releases, atlases, and encyclopedias; an information desk with flyers promoting library events for toddlers, young readers, teens, parents, English-language students, and older patrons. One librarian asks if I need anything. Another stacks books.
I ask to see the second floor, and Edwin, a sweet and soft-spoken information supervisor, takes me upstairs. Here there are three separate universes. A designated children s space, which is worn but, Edwin says, about to get renovated; a set of tables for English-language courses, which are always oversubscribed; and, in the back, a classroom that serves as the library s Learning Center, a place where anyone over age seventeen who s reading below GED level can get special instruction, individually and in groups.
Everyone is welcome at the l
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Autoren-Porträt von Eric Klinenberg
Eric Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern Romance, and author of the acclaimed books Going Solo, Heat Wave, and Fighting for Air. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, and This American Life.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Eric Klinenberg
- 2019, 304 Seiten, Maße: 13 x 20,066 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Crown
- ISBN-10: 1524761176
- ISBN-13: 9781524761172
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social JusticeEric 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
One of my favorite books of 2018 Klinenberg is echoing what librarians and library patrons have been saying for years: that libraries are equalizers and absolutely universal. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress
An illuminating examination.... Klinenberg s observations are effortlessly discursive and always cogent, whether covering the ways playgrounds instill youth with civic values or a Chicago architect s plans to transform a police station into a community center. He persuasively illustrates the vital role these spaces play in repairing civic life. Publishers Weekly (starred)
If America appears fractured at the national level, the author suggests, it can be mended at the local one. This is an engrossing, timely, hopeful read, nothing less than a new lens through which to view the world and its current conflicts. Booklist (starred)
Eric Klinenberg combines a Jane Jacobs-eye on city life with knowledge of the latest research and practical ideas to address the crucial issues of the day class division, crime, and climate change. This is a brilliant and important book. Arlie Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land
Reading Palaces for the People is an amazing experience. As an architect, I know very well the importance of building civic places: concert halls, libraries, museums, universities, public parks, all places open and accessible, where people can get together and share experiences. To create good places for
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people is essential, and this is what I share with Klinenberg: We both believe that beauty, this kind of beauty, can save the world. Renzo Piano
This fantastic book reminds us that democracy is fortified and enlivened by people coexisting together in public, and that good design and support of a wide variety of public spaces can produce those mysterious things we call community, membership, a sense of belonging, a place, maybe a polity. In an age where the push for disembodiment and never leaving the house and fearing and avoiding strangers and doing everything as fast as possible is so powerful, this book makes the case for why we want to head in the opposite direction. It s both idealistic and, in its myriad examples, pragmatic, and delightfully readable. Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me and A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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
A great example of research made accessible to non-experts Klinenberg draws on loads of published scholarship as well as his own, weaving it together into a powerful argument . What Klinenberg advocates is not luxury along the lines of grand train stations of the past but decency and thoughtfulness in designing the spaces we live in. Inside Higher Ed
Eric Klinenberg believes that social life can be designed well, just as good buildings are. His book is full of hope, which is all the more striking because Klinenberg is a realist. He is a major social thinker, and this is a beautifully written, major book. Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics
In very unequal societies, where the social fabric has been torn apart and the social distances between people create lack of trust, community participation and high levels of stress and distress, it is vitally important to build social infrastucture to bring people together. Healing these rifts is the key to empowering people to tackle the inequality that divides them. Eric Klinenberg shows us how this can be done - this is an important book for our difficult age.
Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level and The Inner Level
Fine reading for community activists seeking to expand the social infrastructure of their own home places. Kirkus Reviews
The author s paean to public libraries will strongly appeal to those who support them as well as interested sociologists and urbanists. Library Journal
This fantastic book reminds us that democracy is fortified and enlivened by people coexisting together in public, and that good design and support of a wide variety of public spaces can produce those mysterious things we call community, membership, a sense of belonging, a place, maybe a polity. In an age where the push for disembodiment and never leaving the house and fearing and avoiding strangers and doing everything as fast as possible is so powerful, this book makes the case for why we want to head in the opposite direction. It s both idealistic and, in its myriad examples, pragmatic, and delightfully readable. Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me and A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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
A great example of research made accessible to non-experts Klinenberg draws on loads of published scholarship as well as his own, weaving it together into a powerful argument . What Klinenberg advocates is not luxury along the lines of grand train stations of the past but decency and thoughtfulness in designing the spaces we live in. Inside Higher Ed
Eric Klinenberg believes that social life can be designed well, just as good buildings are. His book is full of hope, which is all the more striking because Klinenberg is a realist. He is a major social thinker, and this is a beautifully written, major book. Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics
In very unequal societies, where the social fabric has been torn apart and the social distances between people create lack of trust, community participation and high levels of stress and distress, it is vitally important to build social infrastucture to bring people together. Healing these rifts is the key to empowering people to tackle the inequality that divides them. Eric Klinenberg shows us how this can be done - this is an important book for our difficult age.
Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level and The Inner Level
Fine reading for community activists seeking to expand the social infrastructure of their own home places. Kirkus Reviews
The author s paean to public libraries will strongly appeal to those who support them as well as interested sociologists and urbanists. Library Journal
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