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

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The community room serves many purposes: theater, classroom, art studio, civic hall. But this morning two staff members, Terry and Christine, will transform it into something unusual: a virtual bowling alley. They’ve arrived early to set up a flat screen television, link an Xbox to the Internet, clear out a play space, and assemble two rows of portable chairs. It’s opening day of the Library Lanes Bowling League, a new program that encourages older patrons in twelve libraries in Brooklyn to join local teams and compete against neighboring branches. Nine people at New Lots signed up to play, and after weeks of practice, they’re about to take on Brownsville and Cypress Hills.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR •“Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review(Editors’ Choice) There's a term you don't hear these days, one you used to hear all the time when the Carnegie branches opened: Palaces for the People. The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who otherwise couldn't afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And you know, they need other people to recognize it in them too.” 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. In Palaces for the People Klinenberg takes these lines of inquiry further. He stresses the importance, where Jacobs didn’t, of publicly funded facilities. 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. 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?

Read The Inequalities-Environment Nexus report and find out more about the OECD Well-Being Framework At a time when polarization is weakening our democracy, Eric Klinenberg takes us on a tour of the physical spaces that bind us together and form the basis of civic life. We care about each other because we bump up against one another in a community garden or on the playground or at the library. These are not virtual experiences; they’re real ones, and they’re essential to our future. This wonderful book shows us how democracies thrive.” —Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die Chera Kowalski’s TED Talk, “The Critical Role That Libraries Play in the Opioid Crisis,” (tiny.cc/libraryopioids): Kowalski discusses the importance of libraries in general as well as her personal experience working to improve health and safety in her own community. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

The Philadelphia studies suggest that place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects.” NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

When everyone is outfitted the players take their seats, making small talk and tapping their toes in anticipation. Christine tries to link the Xbox to the machine in the basement at the Brownsville Library, where their opponents, invisible to us but no doubt similarly composed, have put on their own uniforms and settled in for the match. It worked perfectly in practice, but this time there’s something wrong with the connection. Christine calls Brownsville. Yes, they’re there, just working on the Wi‑Fi. In a few minutes, the machines are in sync and the game is on.