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

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civil Life by Eric Klinenberg delves into the connections that form when infrastructure is designed to bring people together to support building community. Klinenberg writes in way that feels like a story unfolding that explores the decline of community by the decline of social infrastructure as well as the solutions to bring community together. Palaces for the People delves into how libraries bring people together, community gardens create not only food but fellowship, and how storm walls can be built to double as gathering places among other structures built with the people who will use them in mind. Klinenberg presents research that shows how community changes when infrastructure supports the community. He examines the myths and the realities surrounding how infrastructure succeeds and fails. Palaces for the People offers an honest assessment of infrastructure, communities, and the polarization that infiltrates attempts to create both better infrastructure and community written in an easy to read, engaging, and hopeful manner.

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