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

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As an avid supporter of public infrastructure and spaces, I was really excited to pick this book up. He is the author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (The Penguin Press, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), as well as the editor of Cultural Production in a Digital Age and of the journal Public Culture. With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who go solo, Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of living alone is transforming the American experience. The elderly can also participate in some of these activities in senior centers, but there they can do them only with other old people, and often that makes them feel stigmatized, as if old is all they are. They also learn about collaborative problem-solving, and how to interact with different kinds of people.

Wonderful ideas and some really interesting points but I do not trust ANY book which talks about race and sociology without talking about white privilege and white supremacy. Palaces for the People has a long and informative subtitle: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. Klinenberg states that today Americans are less likely to marry someone outside their social class (153).If it had admitted that this is an inherently political subject because massive disparities in power created the problems it's addressing. And that left me on high alert for the handful of "this happens on both sides" and "polarization" comments throughout the book. Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans’ changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures–whether they be PTA, church, or political parties–have disintegrated. This is a resource for organizations and others interested in implementing strategies that successfully bring differing groups together across communities. It is also a case study in the constraints of a purely narrative approach to the problems of inequality and social suffering.

He has contributed to the Guardian, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic, Rolling Stone and Wired. The Philadelphia studies suggest that place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects. His most egregious and pointless bit of ”both sides-ism” is equating the chair of the California Democratic Party (no, I don’t know who this is, either) saying “fuck Donald Trump” and giving him the middle finger, to Trump leading supporters in a chant of “lock her up.

Apparently NOBODY segregated the pools which lead to an epidemic of brown children not knowing how to swim. What opportunities arise for the development of social infrastructure alongside increased spending on physical infrastructure?

Communities with strong social capital—as evidenced by the density of civic organizations and rates at which citizens voted—are more likely to be insulated from the crisis. A PASS EDUCATIONAL GROUP, LLChas been developing custom, high-quality academic and educational content for our clients since 2009. The book concludes with an attack on Mark Zuckerberg for claiming Facebook as “social infrastructure”.Some places, such as libraries, YMCAs, and schools, provide space for recurring interaction, often programmed, and tend to encour­age more durable relationships. But Klinenberg, an optimist, tells heartwarming stories of abandoned lots in Englewood, Chicago, that have been converted to agriculture, of “geriatric parks” in Spain, complete with age-appropriate play equipment, of measures in Singapore to help people of different generations know one another.

And while social infrastructure alone isn’t sufficient to unite polarized societies, protect vulnerable communities, or connect alienated individuals, we can’t address these challenges without it. Yes, he wants to appeal to readers of every political persuasion, but come on – it’s pretty obvious who he votes for, and who most readers would vote for.Richly reported and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People offers a blueprint for bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides. 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.