A review by megelsewhere
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg

4.0

I appreciated all the examples of social infrastructure and case studies the author made connections to. This is a matter of wishing that it was a different book, which is not helpful, and yes I'll look for further books on the subject to fill that want, so-since I was already on board the thesis, I had hoped more of the book would be spent on discussing connections/differences between types of social infrastructure (parks vs playgrounds vs libraries vs markets vs gardens vs schools- they all build different types of connections and require different types of investments/underlying infrastructure, and a more systematic breakdown would have been interesting. Creation of space for small groups to come together, vs creation of small groups themselves?). There were a bunch of chicken and egg issues presented in examples, and I was hoping for more depth on those as well- like the changing nature of childhood play and supervision and how it breaks old social ties to not have kids running around on the streets and forms new ones- there's a lot more to unpack there. I would also be very interested for more depth on successfully integrating social infrastructure with 'hard' infrastructure, which is mentioned in a few case studies- what could make existing or planned infrastructure more social and what makes it too exclusive (like the High Line)? And finally, I always love more discussion of the privatization of public space.

Definitely worth a read if you're curious on the subject, want examples, and if you need more background on what social infrastructure could be. There's a lot to chew on in here, and it has places to start looking for more information.

Edit- Also, interesting link to Becoming by Michelle Obama- he mentions Barack Obama and his work building places, but then he also discusses a program that University of Chicago developed to link the campus to the surrounding community but didn't mention Michelle Obama helped develop that overall program back in the mid 2000s! Reading about the program from the two perspectives (his description is of the program after she was there) was interesting.