Quotes from Eric Klinenberg

People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.

Robust social infrastructure doesn't just protect our democracy; it contributes to economic growth.

The elderly can also participate in some of these activities in senior centers, but there they can do them only with other old people, and often that makes them feel stigmatized, as if old is all they are. For many seniors, the library is the main place they interact with people from other generations.

In 1971, the Supreme Court had narrowly ruled that closing swimming pools in response to integration orders was not unconstitutional, even if the closure had discriminatory intent, because it affected whites and blacks equally.

Even the Internet, which was supposed to deliver unprecedented cultural diversity ad democratic communication, has become an echo chamber where people see and hear what they already believe.

Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.

You have it in you already. You just sort of need to be exposed to these things and provide yourself an education. The library assumes the best out of people. The services it provides are founded upon the assumption that if given the chance, people will improve themselves.

Living in a place like East New York requires developing coping strategies, and for many residents, the more vulnerable older and younger ones in particular, the key is to find safe havens. As on every other Thursday morning this spring, today nine middle-aged and elderly residents who might otherwise stay home alone will gather in the basement of the neighborhood's most heavily used public amenity, the New Lots branch library.

As of 2016, more than twelve million Americans aged sixty-five and above live by themselves, and the ranks of those who are aging alone is growing steadily in much of the world.

The dead bodies were so visible that almost no one could see what had happened to them.

After examining the body, pathologists determined that Laczko had died of artherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and heat stress.

Social media, for all their powers, cannot give us what we get from churches, unions, athletic clubs, and welfare states. They are neither a safety net nor a gathering place. In fact, insider accounts from Silicon Valley tech companies establish that keeping people on their screens, rather than in the world of face-to-face interaction, is a key priority of designers and engineers.

But together they will represent the range of positions and the diversity of viewpoints that constitute the heterogeneity of the modern city and account for the variations in the ways that the heat wave was managed and interpreted.

In New Orleans, the Lafitte Greenway is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that's designed to connect people and neighborhoods that might otherwise remain divided.