Looking for a fast, fun read that gets your brain juices flowing about how to make a flourishing community? Well, look no further than Eric Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. 

That full title is pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll give my own gloss: in that book, Klinenberg introduces the idea of social infrastructure – all the places and stuff and systems that can help us develop and thrive as social beings (or get in the way of social flourishing). With chapters about libraries, residential neighborhoods, schools, green spaces, and more, this book really gets you thinking about how those things (or lack thereof) impact quality of life for everyone in a community, whether they realize it or not.

I have very fond memories of my family walking to the local Carnegie library on Friday nights with an old, half-broken picnic basket to fill with kids books. I remember the “ka-thunk” sound of the librarian putting cards into the slot on the top of a machine that would stamp on the due date and then tucking them into the special envelopes at the back of the books. I remember the majestic-seeming stuffed bison head that hung at the top of the stairway, and the smooth glide of the drawers in the adults’ rooms card catalog. Everything about the public library was, to me, a source of wonder and delight – may we all, together, take the necessary steps to ensure that our public libraries, parks, and other elements of our social infrastructure do as much to support the flourishing of the new generation as they did for me when I was young.