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

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The United States invests far more in disaster recovery than in preparing for disasters by designing and creating more resilient buildings and infrastructure. As a consequence, we are trapped in a cycle of repeatedly rebuilding shoddy systems in predictably dangerous places. 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 people is essential, and this is what I share with Klinenberg: We both believe that beauty, this kind of beauty, can save the world.” Even the Internet, which was supposed to deliver unprecedented cultural diversity ad democratic communication, has become an echo chamber where people see and hear what they already believe.”

Place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based ones. What if vacant property received the attention that, for decades, has been showered on petty crime? He describes an initiative in Brooklyn where older people can play in virtual bowling leagues as a way of meeting people Living in a place like East New York requires developing coping strategies, and for many residents, the more vulnerable older 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.” An American Summer* is a powerful indictment of a city and a nation that have failed to protect their most vulnerable residents, or to register the depth of their pain. It is also a case study in the constraints of a purely narrative approach to the problems of inequality and social suffering.

I took a star off because I found the text somewhat rambling and roundabout. I thought it would be much more useful to divide chapters by type of institution, so those reading for institutional purposes could easily find what they're looking for. I did see an indication that the finished copy will have an index, so that should help. This is a book with which few Observer readers will disagree. It champions “social infrastructure”, meaning libraries, urban farms, playgrounds, sports grounds and all the other shared spaces that allow people to make connections, form networks and find ways to know and help one another. It doesn’t like Trump, racial segregation or climate change denial. Its theme is important and timely, but it leaves you wanting more.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR •“Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review(Editors’ Choice) Klinenberg, a professor of sociology at New York University, examines how our social structures--from the library to schools to community gardens--can help mitigate problems and challenges of our divided civic life. He posits that neighborhoods, regardless of economic or over-all social standing, which have strong social infrastructure do better at taking care of one another when crises strike and also do better at resisting crime and other negative social impacts. 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 can’t otherwise 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.” Publicly traded corporations, including Facebook, are legally required to maximize shareholder value, and while some CEOs define value expansively, most focus on the bottom line.”

Public libraries are largely funded by local tax revenues; their operations are overseen by a publicly-appointed board. There is considerable variation in the level and type of state tax support. Federal support is small in terms of dollars, but is strategically important for the development of tech-based processing networks and distribution of information. Public libraries are a public expense accepted by the large majority of American taxpayers, Republican and Democrat. After finishing the intro and first chapter, I found myself thinking about the fact that a better world is not only possible — we already have many of the in I don’t believe we have a loneliness epidemic. But millions of people are suffering from social disconnection. Whether or not they have a minister for loneliness, they deserve more attention and help than we’re offering today. 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.”

Social media, for all their powers, cannot give us what we get from churches, unions, athletic clubs, and welfare states. They are neither a safety net nor a gathering place. In fact, insider accounts from Silicon Valley tech companies establish that keeping people on their screens, rather than in the world of face-to-face interaction, is a key priority of designers and engineers.” This is the territory of Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities praised the inherent sociability of a traditional street. In Palaces for the People Klinenberg takes these lines of inquiry further. He stresses the importance, where Jacobs didn’t, of publicly funded facilities. He makes the case that the physical spaces and conditions that make communal life require investment just as much as bridges, roads and all those other works of heavy engineering that usually go under the title of infrastructure. In New Orleans, the Lafitte Greenway is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that’s designed to connect people and neighborhoods that might otherwise remain divided.” 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 ReviewKlinenberg quotes C. Ray Jeffery: “There are no criminals, only environmental circumstances which result in criminal behavior. Given the proper environmental structure, anyone will be a criminal or a noncriminal” (59). Yet Klinenberg argues that “. . . most policies that aim to reduce crime focus on punishing people rather than improving places” (59). In what ways does one’s environment shape one’s choices? How can environments be designed to discourage crime? These are private social infrastructures, there for the pleasure and convenience of first-tier staff members whose color-coded badges grant them access, but, crucially, not for the low-level temps and contractors who cook and clean in the same organization, and not for neighboring residents or visitors. These expensive, carefully designed social infrastructures work so well for high-level tech employees that they have little reason to patronize small local businesses—coffee shops, gyms, restaurants, and the like—that might otherwise benefit far more from the presence of a large employer.”