Review by Choice Review
Klinenberg (sociology, NYU) argues that "social infrastructure"--the physical arrangement of human spaces to promote social connection--is an underappreciated but vital aspect of social health. Social infrastructure is exemplified by public libraries, one of the places Klinenberg calls "palaces of the people." Klinenberg also considers other physical spaces and institutions, including schools, parks, public pools, even police stations redesigned as community centers. A chapter on climate change seems more concerned with physical than social structures. The author has an interesting critique of how the famous "broken windows" theory of policing was implemented: it works better if you actually fix the windows, rather than just beef up the policing of petty crimes. Klinenberg builds on his findings in Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (CH, Mar'03, 40-4319), in which he showed that those with no social space to go to were more likely to die, and in Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (CH, Aug'12, 49-7198). Though Klinenberg offers more insightful observations than specific empirical accounts of how, exactly, to make good social infrastructure, the book adds a useful concept to the discussion of effective place making. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals; general readers. --Beau Weston, Centre College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
THIS TIME OF YEAR,my wooden desktop in the Office of the Mayor looks very similar to my computer desktop: covered in spreadsheets. It's budget season in South Bend, Ind. - the annual reckoning. Priorities jostle against one another, and sometimes it feels as if we must choose between investing in places (fire stations, streetscapes) and investing in people (after- school programs, job training). We do some of both, of course, but the process forces us to balance two concepts of what a city is: a place and a population. 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 21stcentury urban America. Klinenberg is an N.Y.U. sociologist best known recently as Aziz Ansari's co-author for "Modern Romance," in which he helped the comedian apply social science tools to better understand dating. Here, he begins with questions he first addressed in an earlier book on a lethal heat wave that struck Chicago in 1995. He asked how two adjacent poor neighborhoods on the South Side, demographically similar and presumably equally vulnerable, could fare so differently in the disaster. Why did elderly victims in the Englewood neighborhood lose their lives at 10 times the rate of those in Auburn Gresham? The explanation had to do with social capital, the amount of interpersonal contact that exists in a community. In the neighborhood with fewer fatalities, people checked on one another and knew where to go for help; in the other, social isolation was the norm, with residents more often leftto fend for themselves, even to perish in sweltering housing units. Crucially, these were not cultural or economic differences, but rather had to do with things like the density of shops and the vacancy rate along streets, which either helped or hurt people get to know one another in their communities. The new book's exploration of this reality begins in the basement of a library in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood, where an Xbox-based bowling competition pits local seniors against rival teams from a dozen library branches across the borough. The example of a virtual bowling league has particular poetic resonance two decades after Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist, raised fears of societal collapse in his study "Bowling Alone." Where Putnam charted the decline of American communal participation through shrinking bowling league membership, Klinenberg's basement of virtual bowlers illustrates how technology might actually enhance our social fabric - provided there are supportive spaces. Given what we have learned about the health impacts of social isolation among the elderly, lives may depend on creating more such opportunities. Klinenberg finds in libraries "the textbook example of social infrastructure in action," a shared space where everyone from schoolchildren doing homework to the video-gaming elderly can get to know one another better. For him, the presence of destitute or mentally ill visitors is a feature, not a bug, of libraries, because it requires people to confront radical differences in a shared space. Klinenberg extends the idea of social infrastructure to grade schools, college campuses, public housing, private apartment buildings, coffee shops, sidewalks, pocket parks, churches, murals, even flood-management projects in Singapore and public pools in Iceland. Pretty much any space that can affect the social fabric is within the author's scope. Here, social infrastructure is not a subset of what we call "infrastructure" but something broader, which makes his project ambitious but also perhaps too vague: After all, if it could include virtually all public and many private or even virtual spaces, is the category even useful? It is, especially when Klinenberg discusses social infrastructure in terms of quality, not just quantity. While some of his examples simply reinforce the inarguable fact that we need more of these resources (more libraries! more gyms! more gardens!), his most illuminating cases gauge what happens in spaces whose designs are either socially helpful or harmful. Social infrastructure becomes less a thing to maximize than a lens that communities and policymakers should apply to every routine decision about physical investment: Do the features of this proposed school, park or sewer system tend to help human beings to form connections? In case after case, we learn how sociallyminded design matters. A vaunted housing project built in 1950s St. Louis quickly became a nightmare of crime and vandalism; a smaller, adjacent complex remained relatively free of trouble because its design promoted "informal surveillance" and care of common spaces by neighbors. The reconfiguration of large urban schools into smaller, more manageable ones now shows promise in boosting graduation rates in New York - partly because this allows parents, students and teachers to form a community in which problems are addressed informally before they can disrupt learning. Meanwhile, much of our built environment contains negative or "exclusive social infrastructure," including gated communities in the United States and South Africa, and college fraternities, which Klinenberg condemns categorically based on their association with substance abuse and sexual assault. (The construction of a massive wall, unsurprisingly, is an example of public investment that is not conducive to social infrastructure.) Much of the book's most interesting content has to do with climate security. From the informal network of Houston churches that kicked into gear after Hurricane Harvey, to the unlikely rise of the Rockaway Beach Surf Club in New York as a vital hub of recovery after Hurricane Sandy, we see how the right kind of social infrastructure can aid struggling communities and even save lives by connecting people during and after disasters. As Klinenberg observes, "when hard infrastructure fails . . . it's the softer, social infrastructure that determines our fate." Klinenberg's approach even lets him apply appealing nuance to precincts of our social life that have become objects of simplistic head-shaking and finger-wagging. When it comes to social media, for example, he takes a look at online communities, especially for young people, and pointedly suggests that teenagers turn to the digital realm largely because they have little alternative. Modern parenting norms make it less likely they will be allowed to physically move around their neighborhoods and communities. When unable to use traditional spaces like streets or parks, young people have no choice but to rely on the internet as their primary social infrastructure. It's a point that should invite introspection among parents who require their children to remain within sight, then scold them for spending too much time looking at screens. "Palaces for the People" reads more like a succession of case studies than a comprehensive account of what social infrastructure is, so those looking for a theoretical framework may be disappointed. But 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. After finishing it, I started asking how ordinary features of my city, from streetlights to flowerpots, might affect the greater wellbeing of residents. Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social. PETE BUTTIGIEG is the mayor of South Bend, Ind. His first book, "Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future," will be published in January.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* 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 cafés, 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.--Sam Kling Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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." (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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 © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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 enterprisese.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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.