He talks about the importance of school gates as places where parents can get to know one another and the loss of that opportunity in schools with drive-through drop-offs.

He describes an initiative in Brooklyn libraries where older people can play in virtual bowling leagues as a way of getting them out of their homes and meeting people. 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.Īnd so he spends time in public libraries, seeing how people of differing ages, status and ethnicities cohabit their spaces, how conflicts are negotiated and collaborations start, and how these institutions give refuge to people who feel excluded or diminished elsewhere. He stresses the importance, where Jacobs didn’t, of publicly funded facilities. In Palaces for the People Klinenberg takes these lines of inquiry further. 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. He describes an initiative in Brooklyn where older people can play in virtual bowling leagues as a way of meeting people It seems they encouraged the cooperation and support that helped people survive. Places with similar demographics but more cohesive fabric fared better. There, he discovered that the likelihood of death or illness from the heat related not only to deprivation and social position, as might be expected, but also to the physical form and condition of the neighbourhood – “bombed-out” areas, with vacant lots and ragged streets, made their residents’ chances worse.

Its theme is important and timely, but it leaves you wanting more.Įric Klinenberg is a sociologist based at New York University, who made his name with a study of a lethal 1995 heatwave in his native Chicago. It doesn’t like Trump, racial segregation or climate change denial. 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. T his is a book with which few Observer readers will disagree.

Eric klinenberg books