Palaces for the People

July 1, 2018
Want to cut down on crime? Install a community garden, increase public library funding, and start talking to your neighbors.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 (Sociology/New York Univ.; Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, 2012, etc.) 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." As the author notes, scholars such as Jane Jacobs long ago pointed out the importance of private enterprises such as grocery stores, barbershops, and cafes in the lives of neighborhoods and communities; where areas lack such amenities, crime and alienation run high. Yet the public goods do the heavy lifting. Those child care centers foster "bonds of friendship and mutual support" among parents, again building community in ways that only they can do. Klinenberg examines new manifestations of social infrastructure enterprises--e.g., farmers markets and organizations such as Growing Home, a clearinghouse for community gardens that "foster interactions within and across generations, resulting in less social isolation as well as more cohesion, civic participation, and neighborhood attachment."Fine reading for community activists seeking to expand the social infrastructure of their own home places.

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Starred review from July 16, 2018
Sociologist Klinenberg (coauthor of Modern Romance) 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. He visits geothermal pools in Iceland, open to the public day and night, which provide a place for people to commingle despite the frigid weather; the Metropolitan Oval soccer complex in Queens, N.Y., where for the past 90 years local youth of all backgrounds have played sports; and the floating schools and libraries located on the riverbanks around Bangladesh that host courses on literacy, sustainable agriculture, and disaster survival, while also providing shelter to citizens unable to afford conventional protection from the region’s catastrophic floods. 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 “in an era characterized by urgent social needs and gridlock stemming from political polarization.”

August 1, 2018

Sociologist Klinenberg (director, Inst. for Public Knowledge, New York Univ.; Going Solo; Heat Wave) prescribes a stronger social infrastructure (defined as places and organizations that encourage people to come together) as an antidote to the current troubling divisions within our country. His examples include public libraries (the title is a nod to Andrew Carnegie), churches, parks, public pools, and sports teams. Some commercial establishments, such as coffee shops, barbershops, and bookstores, also encourage social mingling. Using examples from around the world, the author highlights how hard infrastructure, such as seawalls or bridges, can be designed to include community spaces with walking/biking trails or parks. He also looks at how some cities have used social infrastructure to create solutions to problems such as drug addiction, urban food deserts, or geriatric isolation. Considering impacts of climate change, he notes that community organizations that provide immediate, on-the-ground response to weather crises require a healthy social infrastructure. He dismisses tech apologists who believe the Internet can substitute for face-to-face interaction. VERDICT The author's paean to public libraries will strongly appeal to those who support them as well as interested sociologists and urbanists.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

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Starred review from August 1, 2018
Renowned sociologist Klinenberg (Going Solo, 2011) 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 caf�s, social infrastructure encompasses the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact. Social infrastructure can be mundane: a sidewalk in front of a day care, for example, gives waiting parents a place to exchange child-rearing advice. Yet collectively, such features can improve individuals' lives and strengthen community in profound ways. At a public library in Manhattan, visitors learn to associate with all kinds of people, including rowdy children or homeless patrons. In Houston, a multiracial group of churchgoers uses Facebook to distribute supplies in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. In six nuanced, thematic chapters, blending academic research, interviews, and personal narrative, Klinenberg presents social infrastructure as the neglected building block of a healthy civil society. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)