“ In a world where we spend ever more of our time staring at screens, blocking out even our most intimate and proximate human contacts, public institutions with open-door policies compel us to pay close… Eric Klinenberg
“ Infrastructure is not a term conventionally used to describe the underpinnings of social life. But this is a consequential oversight, because the built environment -- and not just cultural preferences… Eric Klinenberg
“ Today, as cities and suburbs reinvent themselves, and as cynics claim that government has nothing good to contribute to that process, it's important that institutions like libraries get the recognitio… Eric Klinenberg
“ For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsat… Eric Klinenberg
“ The teens whom [danah boyd, director of the research institute Data & Society] interviewed insisted they prefer hanging out in person to messaging on smartphones, but adults have restricted their mobi… Eric Klinenberg
“ The accessible physical space of the library is not the only factor that makes it work well as social infrastructure. The institution's extensive programming, organized by a professional staff that up… Eric Klinenberg
“ 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… Eric Klinenberg
“ Few modern social infrastructures are natural, however, and in densely populated areas even beaches and forests require careful engineering and management to meet human needs. This means that all soci… Eric Klinenberg
“ The four countries with the highest rates of living alone are Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, where roughly 40 to 45 percent of all households have just one person. By investing in each other’s… Eric Klinenberg
“ What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social inf… Eric Klinenberg
“ Alexis de Tocqueville admired the laws that formally established America's democratic order, but he argued that voluntary organizations were the real source of the nation's robust civic life. John Dew… Eric Klinenberg
“ 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. Eric Klinenberg
“ 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 wa… Eric Klinenberg
“ Heat waves receive little public attention not only because they fail to generate the massive property damage and fantastic images produced by other weather-related disasters, but also because their v… Eric Klinenberg
“ Living alone helps us pursue sacred modern values—individual freedom, personal control, and self-realization—whose significance endures from adolescence to our final days. It allows us to do what we w… Eric Klinenberg
“ Schumpeter may well have seen singles as rational. but in a survey of Americans conducted in 1957, more than half the respondents said that unmarried people were sick, immoral, or neurotic, while abou… Eric Klinenberg
“ Hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows that entombed them in suffocating private spaces where visitors came infrequently and the air was heavy and still. Among these victims, the b… Eric Klinenberg
“ After examining the body, pathologists determined that Laczko had died of artherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and heat stress. Eric Klinenberg
“ THE SINGLE WOMAN, far from being a creature to be pitied and patronized, is emerging as the newest glamour girl of our times . . . She is engaging because she lives by her wits. She supports herself.… Eric Klinenberg
“ Recent decades, American utility companies have spent relatively little on research and development. One industry report estimates that, in 2009, research-and-development investments made by all US el… Eric Klinenberg
