Trying to engineer hot weather out of existence rather than adjust our culture of consumption for the age of climate change is one of our biggest environmental blind spots. Building against climate change can either support vibrant neighborhood conditions or undermine them. Just as the temperature of a heat wave, the height of a storm surge, or the thickness of a levee, it’s the strength of a neighborhood that determines who lives and who dies in a disaster. Want to Survive Climate Change? You’ll Need a Good Community Every day since then, he and Congress have chosen to ignore the carnage in Puerto Rico. He extended his hand, not to help those in need, but rather to pat himself on the back. Trump witnessed the physical devastation and human suffering in person.

Whether or not they have a minister for loneliness, they deserve more attention and help than we’re offering today. But millions of people are suffering from social disconnection.

I don’t believe we have a loneliness epidemic. What if vacant property received the attention that, for decades, has been showered on petty crime? Place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based ones. This crucial institution is being neglected just when we need it the most. To Restore Civil Society, Start With the Library The consequences of that neglect may be less visible than crumbling bridges and ports, but they’re no less dire. But they offer something for everyone, regardless of whether they’re a citizen, a permanent resident, or even a convicted felon – and all of it for free.Īmerica’s Social Infrastructure is Falling Apart, and It’s Hurting Democracyįor decades, we’ve neglected the shared spaces that shape our interactions. Libraries are not the kinds of institutions that most social scientists, policymakers, and community leaders usually bring up when they discuss social capital and how to build it. Palaces for the People: Why Libraries Are More Than Just Books It is also a case study in the constraints of a purely narrative approach to the problems of inequality and social suffering. *An American Summer* is a powerful indictment of a city and a nation that have failed to protect their most vulnerable residents, or to register the depth of their pain.

Eric klinenberg books