Palaces for the People

An eminent sociologist offers an inspiring blueprint for rebuilding our fractured society. We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together, to find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done? In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks that help us form crucial, sometimes life-saving connections. These are places where people can gather and linger, strengthening community ties and promoting interaction across group lines. They are vital parts of what he calls our “social infrastructure,” and as Klinenberg reveals in this book, we have been neglecting them. We do so at our peril.

Klinenberg takes us around the globe—from a housing complex in Singapore to an arts incubator in Chicago, from a soccer pitch in Queens to an evangelical church in Houston—to show how social infrastructure helps solve some of our most pressing challenges: isolation, crime, education, health (particularly addiction), political polarization, and even climate change. Richly reported and elegantly written, Palaces for the People is a passionate plea to acknowledge the role these spaces play in our civic lives as well as an exciting vision of how a twenty-first–century social infrastructure can help us bridge seemingly unbridgeable divides.