[MUSIC PLAYING]
JESSE HAINES: Eric
is here today to talk
about the social side
of physical spaces
in our communities-- the parks,
the churches, the bowling
alleys, the coffee shops,
and, of course, near
and dear to me and the Growth
Google team, the libraries.
But Eric obviously thinks
about all of these spaces.
His book, "Palaces for the
People" provides a really fresh
take on this sort of notion
of social infrastructure
and how it represents the
key to safety and prosperity
in 21st century urban America.
It's a fascinating read,
and you can pick up
a copy after the talk
and I hope you do so.
A little bit about
Eric, he's a professor
of sociology and director of the
Institute for Public Knowledge
at NYU, and his work
has been published
in numerous academic
journals as well as him
being a frequent contributor
to publications ranging
from "The New Yorker"
and "The Wall Street
Journal" to "Rolling Stone."
I will add that Eric
teamed up with Aziz Ansari
and co-authored a book called
"Modern Romance," where
the two applied social science
tools to better understand
dating.
So that is totally in
bounds for the Q&A.
So thank you once again
to Allison McDougall Wheel
from the Roots user
experience team who's
been instrumental in
making this happen today
as well as Arini
in the back there
who was critical to
making all this happen.
And now Eric on behalf of Roots,
Growth Google and the Google
New York Community, welcome.
We're so happy you're here.
[APPLAUSE]
ERIC KLINENBERG: Thank
you for being here.
I know how much you've
got going on here.
You're building billions of
new square feet of real estate
where we speak, so you must all
be very busy people in addition
to your other projects.
I'm actually a
neighbor of yours.
I live on 15th Street, so
I'm very invested in what
you guys do here even though--
it's my third time
speaking at Google.
I like to visit
the building, but I
have to write a book in
order to get in the door.
So I'm working very
hard on the next one
already, but for the
moment, I'm just--
I'm pleased to be here.
And I had this crazy idea even
though this is a tech place
and I knew that you would
have these amazing screens
and all sorts of
technological capacities here,
well, I want to try this thing
which I've been doing recently,
and I hope this is OK with you.
It's a little bit weird,
but I'm actually just going
to talk to you for 40 minutes
or so as if I were a human being
and I had a voice and a body and
you guys have voices and bodies
and we just could
talk to each other.
And I hope that's not too
weird a thing to do here.
But there's going to be
no PowerPoint slides.
I have-- I made them.
I spent hours and
hours preparing them.
I'm not going to use them.
And let's just try to
have a conversation
if that's OK with you.
All right?
Massive applause.
If you're watching on
YouTube in the future, yeah.
So here's how I want to start.
Have any of you guys been to
the Amazon Four Star Store?
Do you know what I'm talking
about, the Four Star Store?
So half of you have been there.
Just so there's this
company called Amazon.
They're moving to New York City.
They've got a really
good deal to come here.
They're going to be
far away in Queens,
but they're going to be a big
presence in New York City.
But they're already
gaining some land here,
and they've decided
that in addition
to having this awesome website
that can get us anything
in a few hours, they
also want to have
more of a retail presence.
And so you've probably seen that
there's Amazon stores appearing
in malls and on some blocks.
And just before Christmas in the
run up to the holiday season,
they open this new thing
called the Four Star Store.
And you're probably
already thinking
wow that sounds really awesome.
I'd love to go to
a Four Star Store.
And in case you haven't been
there, don't know the concept,
the idea is that this
is a store in Soho.
It's on Spring Street in a very
cool, busy part of the city,
and they will only
stock and sell
things at the Four Star Store
that have gotten four stars
or more from Amazon users.
So you know when
you're going in there
that you're going to
get a very high quality
product that people like.
And there was a big "New
York Times" article about it
when it came out, and
I thought that sounds
like a buzzy, neat thing.
And in addition to being
a neighbor of yours,
I'm also a parent who's
raising kids in this area.
You guys are-- this is Google.
Everybody's young, but does
anybody here have children?
Anyone?
So for those of you
who have children here,
there's this thing-- and for
those of you who are thinking
about having children
sometime in the future--
I want to tell you
there's this thing that
happens which is on
weekends, the schools
won't take your kids.
And so you wake
up in the morning,
and things happen like--
I have a 10-year-old
and a 12-year-old--
and I wake up and I'm
married, and it'll
be 9:00 in the
morning and my wife
will say things occasionally
like, hey, Eric, such nice day.
I'm going to run out
and do some errands.
I'll be home around 6:00.
And then you're in this weird
situation because it's 9:00
in the morning, and you're--
there's screens in the house,
but you don't want your kids
on screens all the time.
They can only be on the
screens like 20 hours a day.
And so you got to find something
else that the kids can do,
and my 12-year-old
pretty much doesn't
want to be anywhere near me
at this point because he's 12
and that's what you
do when you're 12.
So now I have like
a 10-year-old,
and it's 9:00 in the morning.
And it's weekend,
and I think, I've
got to come up with a plan.
And I just read this article,
and I just published this book.
And just by the way "Palaces
for the People," which
is the title for the book,
comes from Andrew Carnegie.
And he was like the Bill
Gates of a century ago,
one of the wealthiest
men in the world,
and he has a mixed record as
an employer and capitalist,
definitely like very
gilded age monopolist, not
great to workers, did some
violent and horrible things,
also great philanthropist,
who gave away
the equivalent of
like $250 billion
in contemporary
dollars, including--
he funded the construction
of about 2,800 libraries
around the world and about
1,800, 1,700 are in the US.
And he called them--
he calls the libraries
palaces for the people
because the idea is that he
was an immigrant to the US,
and he was here at a time
when a lot of immigrants
were working in factories and
living in tenement buildings.
And the notion was like you
would come to a library,
and the library
be this thing that
would give you an exalted
experience in the world.
So--
AUDIENCE: Is he from Pittsburgh?
ERIC KLINENBERG: He's
from Pittsburgh, yes.
So the libraries that are
Carnegie libraries often
have very high ceilings and
big windows and big rooms.
And the notion is
that if you go there,
you're supposed to feel like
this sense of opportunity.
The library was literally
like your palace
where you could make
something of yourself.
It was central to his idea
of how you could aspire
to become something greater.
It was his philanthropic
contribution to the public.
And so I was aware that
increasingly these days,
the palaces that people get
excited about our palaces
like the Amazon Four Star Store.
But also that not too far from
the Amazon Four Star Store,
there's a Carnegie Library.
There's one in the
Lower East Side
in a neighborhood called Seward
Park, which I like a lot.
So my poor children,
their father
is a sociologist, which means
that when other parents are
just doing ordinary fun things
like taking them to amusement
parks and McDonald's,
I'm thinking
of social experiments
that will make
their lives more interesting.
And so on this morning,
I decide so my son
doesn't want to be with
me when my wife is out.
I've got my daughter.
She's 10 and full of energy.
We're going to do this thing.
We're going to first go to the
Amazon Four Star Store, which
sounds like this
exciting new place,
and then we're going
to walk to the library.
And we are going to
compare those experiences.
And so I'm so
excited about this.
I get her out the door
because who wouldn't want
to go to the Four Star Store.
I'm really emphasizing the Four
Star Store as I talk to her.
So we get there,
and sure enough, it
is buzzing with activity.
There are tons of people around.
Everybody seems a little
bit curious and happy.
That's got that-- the energy
of a new store that opens up
in Soho and lots people around.
And we walk around, and they
have all these amazing things
like-- because everything
had to have four stars--
so like the vacuum cleaner
that you don't have to push--
the what's it
called, Zumba Rumba.
Zumba's an exercise class.
They have the thing.
Anyway, it's traveling
all over the place, yeah.
And all these good
things going on,
and they had lots of
games, very few books
unfortunately for
the book writers.
But they also had a
talking Chewbacca,
which my daughter loved.
It was an amazing,
amazing Chewbacca.
And what I realized is
that in the 20 minutes
or so that we spent
in this store,
my daughter, bless her asked
me for about $1,200 in stuff
because there's just so
much great stuff there.
And that was
actually OK until we
got to the very end
in which she realized
when I said no you're
not getting anything,
I really meant it.
And that wasn't just because I'm
a really difficult and ornery
person.
It's also that I think there's
this thing about public life
when it's organized around
very commercial activities
as so much of our
public life is,
and that is like
you go shopping,
you go to the new place, and
it feels really fun at first.
And then you realize
that they want
to take something
from you, and they're
asking you to spend money.
And sometimes you
don't have that money.
Often you don't have that money
or not enough because there
are so many things.
And so there's always
a strange feeling
of organizing public life
around commercial things, which
is it's uplifting
and then a little bit
hollow and frustrating, too.
And I thought we would
have that experience.
I didn't realize what a
profound experience of emptiness
and hollowness we'd
have at the end when
she realized all she could do
is put the items on the list.
But it was OK.
So we were at the Amazon
store and the plan--
here's the plan.
We're going to leave there.
She was not going to get
all the things she wanted.
And then I'm going to walk
her to my favorite library
in Seward Park, and
she's going to say,
oh, dad, that's the
best graphic novel here.
I love graphic novels.
Can I have this?
And I was going to say,
of course, you can.
And then she's like, oh, they
have this really cool game.
Can we play this game?
Yes, we can.
Oh, can I have that the video
that we can borrow and bring
back.
Yeah, you can-- yes to
everything was the plan.
And so I totally
engineered this experience
where at the end of the day
is we-- dad, I love libraries.
And all these big shops, they
just want to take from you.
I was so smart about this.
And we went to Seward Park and
that was like a 20-minute walk
there.
Seward Park's in the
oldest municipal park,
the first municipal park
in the United States
on the Lower East Side.
It's a really special place
because the Lower East Side
is a neighborhood like Chelsea
a few decades ago where
we're sitting right
now, historically
a lot of poor people,
a lot of immigrants.
It's in the midst of
a transition there.
There's a lot of
gentrification happening.
Have any of you guys been to
Seward Park or Lower East Side?
And so there's still a
lot of very poor people
who use the library
as a great resource,
but there's also
people who will only
get their coffee from coffee
shops that don't accept cash
because you should only pay
for things with a credit card
these days.
Or if you are the
kind of person who
likes to wake up in the
morning on a weekend
and feel like I want to find
a place where I can spend
$7 on an ice cream
cone, Seward Park
is an awesome place to do that.
There's so many $7
ice cream cones.
And so you feel the
tension when you
go to the neighborhood of
this transition happening.
And the library is
this nice middle ground
where people come
together, and I wanted
her to see all that stuff.
So I'm so pumped.
We walk from Soho.
We're walking east having
this great conversation.
We get to Seward Park, walk
to a library, and it's closed.
It's closed.
Have you seen this talk before?
That's good because
I'm just doing it now,
so that would be very weird.
You might have
technology at Google
where you can fast forward
while someone speaking and see--
I know you're working on that.
So anyway-- so we get-- it's
not only is the library closed,
but it's padlocked at the
gate from outside the library,
so we can't even get
anywhere near it.
Now I spent just about every day
for a year in public libraries
doing work on this
book, and I should
have known that the library
was closed because--
why was the library closed?
Do you know why?
It was Sunday.
And we say that
is if God decreed
that on Sunday the
library would be closed.
And that was the way that my
daughter looked at things.
I asked her why do
you think it's closed.
And she's like,
it's Sunday, dad.
It's like everybody knows
that on Sunday we rest,
and people go to church and
everything-- things that
are these public city things.
They just don't
happen on Sunday.
And I was like, oh,
yeah, that's right.
My daughter's so smart.
I'm very proud of her.
She's only 10, and
she knows that.
And then I realized
that that is true now,
but it's not that things are
closed on Sunday because God
ordained it.
It's that for the last
many years, libraries
and other big
public institutions
that used to draw us together
are closed because we
don't give them enough money in
the public sector to stay open.
And so the default option that
all of us have on the weekend
is that instead of going
to shared places that
are part of the
public realm, we go
to places that are in
the private sector,
the commercial enterprises
that ask something from us.
We pay to be part
of public life.
And I know that because when
I started doing research
on the history of libraries,
one of the things I discovered
is that libraries actually
used to be busiest on Sundays.
Sundays were booming
days for libraries.
Why is that?
Because on Sundays a lot
of people don't work.
It's a great day to be with
your family, with your children,
with your neighbors.
It's a place-- it's a day to
rest and to read and to come
together.
And there's nothing we've
ever engineered that does
that as well as the library.
And so people used to
roll into libraries.
They were booming and
not just on Sundays.
At night-- 7:00, 8:00,
9:00, 10:00 at night,
there's a late night
culture where families
would go and be together because
people work during the day,
and that was the opportunity.
And now we close those things
down as a matter of course,
not because God ordained it
but because we have for decades
made a decision not to
invest in the things
that I've come to consider in
my work social infrastructure.
And libraries are a very
special social infrastructure,
but they are by no
means the only one.
What do I mean by
social infrastructure?
By social infrastructure,
I am referring
to the physical places that
shape the way we interact.
And when we invest in
social infrastructure,
when we build them up
and we design them well
and we take care of
them, we are far more
likely to engage other
people around us,
whether it's friends or family
or neighbors or strangers who
we encounter.
We're more likely to do
it frequently and pleasant
conditions.
At the same time,
if we don't invest
in social infrastructure, we're
all the more likely to wind up
hunkering down, staying
home, being alone, getting
our source of social
satisfaction from the machines
that we carry with us in
our pocket everywhere we go.
And social infrastructure by
the way, it's not a metaphor.
It's a real thing.
I've come to believe that the
social infrastructure is just
as real as the infrastructure
for communication
or for water or for power.
It's literally this
material, physical foundation
that shapes our social lives.
And I first got to know what
social infrastructure is
and came to understand it.
Years ago, I was
working on a book
about a heatwave
in Chicago, which
is the city that I grew up in.
And there was this
incredible heatwave
that happened there in 1995.
Hundreds of people died,
and one of the things
I wanted to do in
the book was to look
at why some neighborhoods
seem to break down and have
catastrophic outcomes and
why others did really well.
And the first order
answer to that problem
is one that will not
interest anybody here.
Obviously, poor
neighborhoods, neighborhood
have a lot of concentrated
disadvantage, old people,
frail people, sick people,
those neighborhoods
are going to do worse than
affluent neighborhoods where
people have resources
and are healthy.
That's-- there's no
Nobel Prize for me,
no magical job offer at
Google at the end of this talk
because I've blown your minds
with the scientific observation
that vulnerable people
die most in a disaster.
Anybody want hire me?
Still no.
So but what was
really interesting
and scientifically puzzling--
and this is why I wrote
my first book about this--
is that it turns
out there's a bunch
of neighborhoods in Chicago
that are similarly poor that
have a similar levels
of segregation,
that demographically are
just about identical.
And many of them are
separated by one street.
And if you looked
at them on paper,
you wouldn't think
anything other
than that these
neighborhoods would
have the same experiences.
But during the
heatwave, it turns out
there were places like--
imagine there was a line
that went through this table
and bisected the room.
And everybody on this
side of the table
was like everybody on this
side of the table in all
the demographic ways that
we conventionally measure,
but on this side of the table,
nobody died in the heatwave.
In fact, you did better than
the most wealthy neighborhoods
in all of Chicago.
And on this side of the
table, it was a catastrophe.
Massive numbers of
people died and got sick,
and there were
deaths of isolation
because people were literally
baking to death at home
not going out.
And so that was
really interesting,
and that was
scientifically puzzling.
And I spent a lot of time in
Chicago trying to figure out
what was going on here.
And the answer turned out
to be that the neighborhoods
like this that were
really protected
were places that had this
booming social infrastructure.
They had robust street life.
The sidewalks were
well taken care of.
They had very little
housing lost, very little
population abandonment.
So you had real density.
There was a dynamic
commercial sector--
shops, nonprofits, institutions
like libraries that draw people
out into public life.
And what that meant for
people in that neighborhood
is that they're more likely
to go outside, just casually
to interact with neighbors
on a regular basis.
And when there was a
crisis, this heatwave,
it's very easy for them
to do the same thing,
and that wound up
being very protective.
But on the other side of the
room, you guys over there,
you picked the wrong side of
the room to sit on, people.
I'm very sorry for you because
here neighborhoods like this,
a lot of abandoned houses, a lot
of empty lots that discourage
people from going outdoors.
It can very dangerous.
We know from a lot of
research that I write about
in this book.
Fewer nonprofit
organizations, less active
religious organizations,
public sector institutions
like libraries not as present
or well run to the extent
that their parks, they
tended to be more abandoned,
just separated by a street.
These are neighborhoods with
tens of thousands of people,
but a street bisects them.
And here what that
meant is people
are less likely to spend time
in public settings getting
to know the people
around them, more
likely to have a small
network, to get isolated,
to die in the heatwave.
And I literally
studied neighborhoods
where the death rate was 10
times higher on this side than
on this side.
And there's one pair of
neighborhoods I found--
and actually a couple
of pairs like this--
where the life expectancy
on this side of the street
was five years
longer than the life
expectancy across the street.
And that was not about
the characteristics
of the population.
That was about the
social infrastructure.
So any of you here for Hurricane
Sandy or Superstorm Sandy?
You guys were around for that?
So I was here, and I'd been
doing a lot of research
on this question about how
social infrastructure works
and why it matters.
And after Sandy, I realized
that a bunch of similar patterns
were happening in New
York City, but also
in New York Sandy occasioned
a real public reckoning
around what do we do now as
we start to think about how
to rebuild our cities,
our communities,
our regions to face
the kinds of problems
we face in the 21st century.
Things like climate change,
high rising seas, bigger storm
surge, but other issues as well.
And I run this thing called the
Institute for Public Knowledge
at NYU, and we were doing a
lot of programming around Sandy
and the future of New York City.
And I'd start
writing some articles
for magazines about how to
think about this infrastructure
crisis that we were facing here.
And one day I got this
call out of the blue
from a member of the Obama
administration who said,
look we have about $50 billion
in federal aid for Sandy that
came from Congress.
And we've cordoned
off a few billion
for a special competition
we called the Rebuild
by Design Competition.
You might not know this,
but ordinarily the way
that FEMA operates
is that if you're
going to get relief for
a disaster from FEMA,
the FEMA regulations
say you can't
build anything that's better
than what was there before.
You can only build things up to
the standards that were there
before because the
federal government is
suspicious of local governments
trying to take advantage
of federal largesse.
And so we say you can't
pretend that something's wrong
and improve but
think about what that
means in the wake of a
hurricane for a region that's
facing rising seas.
You can build a seawall
but only up to four feet.
But sea level rise means
it's not going to work.
Sorry, you can't do that.
So the Obama
administration said, look,
we're going to have to do
things really differently.
And they began this
process by setting aside
funds for this
design competition
that they called
Rebuild by Design.
And the idea is that
they invited teams
from all over the world
to submit applications
to be part of this process.
And 148 teams applied.
Some of the world's
biggest engineering firms
and great architects, Rem
Koolhaas' firm and Bjarke
Ingles' firm and a lot
of starchitect names
that you would recognize,
I'll put in for this.
And they asked me if I'd be
the research director for this.
And that was a really
cool opportunity
because I don't know a
ton about the engineering
of hard infrastructure systems
like seawalls and power grids,
but what I've come
to really understand
is the power of
social infrastructure
and its capacity to
shape our experiences,
whether it's in a neighborhood
or in a workplace where
how things are
designed and built
and what kinds of gathering
places we have really shape
the quality of our
day and potentially
the quality of our work as well.
So I got to work with
these teams, and the idea
that I really impressed
upon the teams, our 10
finalists in the end--
and they had to go through a
nine-month process before they
could come up with a design
proposal that would potentially
get funded or not get
funded by the feds--
the idea I insisted
upon to these teams
is that they recognize that the
systems that they were building
to deal with these
21st century challenges
could do multiple things.
If they were originally
intended to keep the water out,
they should also think
about how they would
shape social life around it.
And it was important to impress
that point upon them, the idea
that you're designing social
infrastructure and not
just hard infrastructure because
I don't know how many of you
remember what the engineers
and the scientists
and the people concerned about
climate change in New York City
were saying New York City
needed to do after Sandy,
but the leading proposals for
how to rebuild this region
were organized
around this phrase.
Tell me if you
recognize this phrase.
The phrase that
everybody was saying
after Sandy what New York City
needed to do was build a wall.
You recognize that phrase?
Does that sound familiar?
Build a wall was a big proposal.
And I-- if I were using
all the technology,
I will show you these design
ideas for like giant seawalls
that would go where the
Verrazzano Bridge is now.
Other ideas about building
hard infrastructure
that would keep the water out
and keep New York City safe.
But there's lots of
problems with building
hard infrastructure,
especially things like walls,
which turned out not to work
for water or for people.
One of the problems
that I learned
is that if you build a seawall
to try to keep water out
of a place like New York
City-- and by the way
we're talking like from
the flood plain here.
I think we were--
the Google Complex sits
very close to where
water could easily come in not
just in New York City but also
if you're watching
in Mountain View,
you guys are even more
vulnerable, so hi.
But these are really
serious issues.
So if you build a wall, seawalls
are designed to open and close,
and the idea is you
want to keep them
open as much time as possible.
You only close them
when you really need it.
But if the sea
levels are rising,
then you potentially
need to keep
that wall closed more and--
probably not
everybody in the room
is familiar with the fact
that like on the other side
of the Verrazzano is this
massive ecosystem that
turns into the Hudson River
and the Hudson River Valley.
And if you just build a
wall and shut the water off
from coming out, that
has massive consequences
for the ecosystem, so you can't
make these decisions glibly.
The other thing is--
and this is probably
going to blow your minds because
I didn't know this is true
until I started working
on this project--
but let's say you want to build
a wall to protect Manhattan
in New York City.
You might want to make sure
you're solidly sitting down
because it turns out that
right across the river from us
is a whole entire place
called New Jersey.
And it's a big state.
There's a lot of
people there, and they
have their own infrastructure
and their own housing
and their own sets
of set of issues.
And if you build a wall
to protect New York City,
it's not like the water just
evaporates when it hits it.
It goes to New Jersey.
So-- and there's sediment.
And so that creates problems.
You can't just ask
for federal money
to protect New York
City at the expense--
so let's say then we feel for
our neighbors in New Jersey,
and they've entered
the age of reason now.
And they want to
play ball with us.
We want to do regional
planning, so we throw New Jersey
into the plan.
Have you guys ever
kept going south?
[LAUGHTER]
There's all these
things keep popping up.
There's Delaware, Maryland.
Anyone here been to Maryland?
Virginia.
I'm getting better at
this geography thing.
It's like-- North
Carolina, South Carolina.
Did you guys know that Georgia
actually gets all the way
to the coast over there?
There's like--
So you tell me like where do
you want to stop the wall.
This turns out to be
really a big challenge.
And so we can't just--
I guess what I'm saying
is we face big challenges,
and putting up walls is
not much of an answer.
So I told these teams
think about designing
systems that are both
hard infrastructure
to do what you want but
also social infrastructure.
If you're going
to build a levee,
for instance, think
about the activities that
could happen on top of a levee.
So the big plan that emerged
for the Lower East Side, which
is getting funded with about
a billion and a half dollars
of public money
right now designed
by Bjarke Ingles
and his big team
is instead of a wall
on the Lower East Side,
it's a kind of a
sloped bridging berm
that's going to have park
land and bike path and walking
paths.
It's really going to transform
the feel of the Lower East
Side.
And so it's a big
idea to do something
like that and very different
to build social infrastructure.
So there's one day when I was
walking around with this design
team, and they were-- they
had done all this amazing work
in Louisiana after Katrina.
And they're working on
a plan for the region,
and they said, Eric, we've
been listening to you talk
about social infrastructure
and how important
it is to design physical places
that can bring people together.
And we have come up with a
whole new prototype for a design
concept that we're calling
The Resilience Center,
and we want to
tell you about it.
We're so excited about this.
We think this
Resilience Center, we've
got a prototype it in
Bridgeport, Connecticut.
It's got a lot of
very poor communities.
And we think we're going
to be able to scale it
up and potentially put it in
cities and maybe neighborhoods
all over the country.
And I said that sounds
like an amazing thing.
Who wouldn't want to hear
about The Resilience Center.
So tell me about it.
And they said, OK.
So here's the idea with
The Resilience Center.
We're going to have a building
that's very nicely designed
for social life.
It's going to be a
very welcoming place
with flexible space,
and we're going
to put in this neighborhood
and potentially
put them everywhere.
And the building is
going to be open as much
as we can possibly
afford to get support
to keep it open hopefully six
days a week, maybe even seven.
And it's going to
be staffed by people
who are aggressively welcoming.
Their job is going to be to
make everybody feel at home,
and we can have
little kids come in
because we know from the
things you've told us
about vulnerability that in
neighborhoods the people who
are really tied to the
place where they live
are very young people
and very old people.
There's a lot of
middle aged people
who are bouncing around the
city going all over the place,
but very young people
and older people,
it really matters
where they live
and what the facilities
are like, what
the conditions are like.
Social infrastructure matters.
So this resilience
Center, it's going
to have all these
programs that make
it clear that kids are welcome.
We'll do story times, and
we'll do singing events.
And we'll have all meet ups
where kids in the neighborhood
can meet each other,
and we know that you
can't have things for
kids unless you have
things for their caretakers.
So it could be parents,
it could be grandparents,
it could be baby
sitters, whomever.
But we want to make
sure that there's things
that bring families together.
And I've also written
a lot about the fact
that there's more older people
and older people living alone
in the world today,
and they're really
at risk of getting isolated
in things like heat waves
and hurricanes and in
everyday life as well.
So they said the
resilience center's
going to have lots of special
things for older people that
make it attractive, too.
And because resilience is
so much about communication
and cohesion, we want
to make sure that people
have really good media access
when they come in here,
so we're going to wire
them up with Wi-Fi access.
And we'll have computers,
and we really just see this
as a special idea that
will transform life
in every neighborhood.
What do you think?
And I said to them, wow, that
sounds like an awesome idea.
And then I also said, have
you ever been to a library?
And it was like, whoa, actually
they had just reinvented
the wheel kind of.
And why had they done that?
I think partly it's because
we do live in this moment
where we tend to think that the
biggest problems that we face
can be solved with either
technology or the marketplace.
And not long after
this happened,
there's actually
an economist who
wrote an article
in "Forbes" saying
that libraries had
become obsolete
and they were no longer
worth public investment.
He said, me the cost
benefit analysis
that cashes out the value of
the library as a public good.
He said, instead of libraries,
we should knock them all down,
and we should open
up Amazon stores.
He didn't even know about
the Four Star Store.
He just said we should
open up Amazon stores.
And it's interesting.
I guess I understand--
I understood where
that was coming
from because the
truth is if you go
to the boardrooms of the
biggest companies in the world,
possibly with the
exception of this fine one,
if you go to the people who are
running the US government right
now, imagine talking to
people in the Cabinet,
if you go to people who
run big philanthropies
and you talk about the
places where people gather
and the essential
institutions that
bring us together as citizens
and as human beings that allow
us to bridge divisions,
I think very few people
think of the library.
I think the truth is
that for many people
the library is an afterthought.
It feels like an
antiquated institution.
Who would go there?
But we actually learned
from the response
to this "Forbes"
article just how
out of sync with
American culture
that perspective is because
so many people actually
tweeted a response.
The librarians of the world
united and got on Twitter
and shouted down
this article so hard
that "Forbes" actually
took it down 24 hours
after it posted it, which
is an amazing thing.
And what people did is they
didn't just give him the finger
digitally, which is generally
what happens on Twitter,
they wrote like very
compelling testimonies
to the things that
happen in libraries.
And I realized that
there is really a story
that we need to tell that's
not just about what happens
in libraries but
also what happens
in other kinds of shared spaces,
gathering places, that gives us
a chance to move forward
and potentially even
to make some headway working
through what seems now
to be a real impasse
in our collective life.
I don't know you guys feel about
this, but from my perspective,
it's a scary moment out there.
It-- I do often have
this feeling like things
are falling apart.
It's very hard to read
contemporary politics
and read into the
state of civil society
in places like the
United States today,
not just the United States,
but many places just
like the United States and
see a clear path forward
to a better, more robust
civil society and democracy.
The truth is we're talking
together in early 2019,
and probably no one in this
room feels supremely confident
that five or 10 or 20 years
from now our democracy,
our civil society, will look
the way it does right now.
We're being tested.
So I don't have the illusion
that building libraries
all over the country is going
to solve all of our problems.
I wish I could
come to you and say
I've solved the problem of
democracy and polarization,
and it's the library.
I don't feel that way although
I will tell you something.
I've traveled all
around the world
and spent time in the
big grand libraries
but also the little
branch libraries
that you find in neighborhoods.
And I've certainly
traveled across the country
and seeing them in rural
areas, in suburban areas,
in suburbs and cities and
red states and blue states,
and I will tell you
that there are not
a lot of institutions like
them that bring people
from different
backgrounds together
for shared activities that
are very human and very
deep and very meaningful
and full of potential.
And what I do think is that
there are a set of places that
are vital social infrastructures
that are like libraries, places
like parks and playgrounds
or athletic fields,
our schools that are--
that open their doors
and create place
for community there.
Actually workplaces
can be like this, too.
There are places that allow us,
encourage us to come together
and engage with people
that we might not otherwise
engage with.
And I don't know if you
share this experience,
but I find that when I'm
in a place like a library
or even an athletic field or
a park and I find someone--
I find myself talking to someone
or interacting with someone
who has different
feelings than I do,
it's a much more
peaceful disagreement
than it is when I meet
someone that way on Twitter
where we go from 0 to
60 very, very fast.
So I've been spending
a lot of time thinking
about how do we
begin to rebuild.
How do we not just rebuild
after a storm, a climate event,
but how do we start to rebuild
after the kinds of storms
that we're experiencing
in our civic life?
How do we start to put
pieces together again?
And I don't think that building
a library is the solution,
but I don't see a
better starting point
than investing in
places like libraries,
in shared places that
encourage us to come together
for more peaceful interactions.
I don't see any other way
to start to move forward.
And one of the things
that's very interesting
is to note that there are
possibilities for developing
social infrastructure at the
public level that involve
collective investment
in these projects,
and personally I don't
see a way to get out
of the situation we're
in without those kinds
of investments.
But also there's a role
to play for philanthropy
and for the private
sector as well.
If you think about what's going
to happen in New York City
where we're standing over
the next several years,
for instance, there's going
to be a lot of private sector
investment in remaking
our neighborhoods
and remaking the cityscape.
And the way in which
that investment happens,
the kinds of shared
spaces that we build
and whether they're
walls or bridges,
is going to make a tremendous
difference for those of us
who live here and want to
raise families here and try
to make a neighborhood
something that's a community.
Those decisions are
really significant,
so I'm going to start to wrap up
so we can have a conversation.
But I want to wrap up
by saying the following.
We keep hearing about
infrastructure week
and how that's going to happen.
The government is
rather distracted,
although it's at the
moment completely closed,
so infrastructure week
has not been happening.
And it probably will not happen,
and it's probably a good thing
that it's not going to happen
in the next couple of years.
But at some point,
it is inevitable
that we will have not
just infrastructure
week but infrastructure era
because the systems that we
rely on to live
in modern society
simply don't work anymore.
And I'm saying that
to a roomful of people
who probably taking the
subway enough to know
that that's true.
But this-- systems where
you pick your system type,
they're out of date.
They were built at another
moment with different
technology .
They're worn down, and
they're clearly not up
to the kinds of challenges
we face in the 21st century.
Currently the biggest
and boldest idea
for infrastructure that we
have from our government
is the wall.
And unfortunately it's also the
most anti-social infrastructure
that one could possibly imagine.
It's a losing strategy.
We also have a vision
for infrastructure
that comes out of
the tech sector,
and specifically in this
case, it comes from Facebook.
I don't know if you guys are
on Mark Zuckerberg's holiday
mailing list like I am, but as
a member of one of his clubs,
I get letters from him
occasionally after big events.
And after the
election in 2016, Mark
sent his 2 billion friends a
letter saying, don't worry,
guys.
It may be true that
the traditional meeting
places that people have used
are doing less well than they
used to, but Facebook is here to
be your social infrastructure.
And he use that language,
and the argument
was you can come to Facebook for
meaningful social interactions
and meaningful community life.
And the suggestion was
you guys have your devices
and we're really going
to help you rebuild
the special communities.
I am not against the devices.
I have one here.
I don't like to
leave without it.
It makes me uncomfortable
and nervous.
I'm on all the
social media things.
I'm not a Luddite, but I've also
been to the Facebook campus.
Have any of you guys been to the
Facebook campus in Menlo Park?
They probably are never
letting you guys in.
There's a couple of guys.
Yeah.
But the Google Camp is
not that much different.
Let me tell you that no living
human being has invested
as much money in physical,
social infrastructure
as Mark Zuckerberg,
maybe Larry and Sergei.
Sorry, guys.
Maybe the people running Apple.
But Silicon Valley tech
firms understand the value
of social infrastructure.
Have you guys ever been outside
of this room in your office?
It's crazy out there.
I walked by a spa
just to get here.
There's free food everywhere.
I started eating banana.
Someone came in wanting
to massage me to make
sure I was ready for coding.
You guys work in a
worker's paradise
that's designed to make
you want to be here.
It's designed to help you be as
productive as you can possibly
humanly be.
It's designed to help
you bump into people
who are brilliant and awesome
in places where you wouldn't
expect to meet like over the
kale salad bar or the Sambuca
Club--
I don't know-- weekly meeting.
Wherever it is that
you do, it's all
designed so you
have the experience
of being with each other.
And it's a really dynamic
and exciting place.
That's done with a
physical investment
in social infrastructure.
You guys can do better.
And one of the really
big questions for Google
in California-- that's
telling me it's time
for Q&A. One of the really
good investments for Google
to be thinking about in
California and in New York
is how do you build a
social infrastructure that
works for Googlers
and that also works
for the region and the
neighborhood, the city,
that Google's embedded
in because I don't want
my only experience
to Google being like,
oh there's this whole building
that they just took over,
and I'm never going to go
in there again unless I
write a book.
And then I get an
hour and a banana.
So how is Google
going to contribute
to the social
infrastructure of New York?
It's not fair to
say it's just going
to happen with your
machine while we
build these awesome
places for ourselves.
And so the vision that
I'm proposing to you
is a vision that takes
seriously the physical places
where we live and where
we work and spend time
with one another.
And the question that I
guess I want to ask of you
is to think seriously about
how Google can contribute
to this neighborhood and the
city or if you're in Menlo Park
right now or Los
Altos or Sunnyvale
or San Jose, that city,
those neighborhoods, what's
Google's contribution
to our collective
and shared social
infrastructure going to be?
To what extent are the
future social infrastructures
of our world going to
look like libraries?
And to what extent are they
going to look like walls?
So I'm going to stop there.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
I think we have
time for questions.
I have a mic, which I guess
I'm going to hand to you.
And we-- you can
just pass it around.
AUDIENCE: Perfect.
Well, first of all,
thank you very much.
It's also really great
to just watch you
and not some slides while
you're giving a talk.
And I play soccer
at Seward Park,
and I think the whole place if
you haven't been there feels
a bit like a social experiment.
I've never been anywhere
else in New York that
has such high levels of
just social interaction
and collaborate--
buzzing with activity.
But I wanted to ask.
So I am part of the Growth
Google team as well,
and we are actually this spring
opening up a physical space
in our New York
office, a learning
center for the community, for
partners within our community,
to bring digital skills
training to the community
that we're a part of.
And I guess with
that idea, we're
trying to open our doors
for social interaction
and community
building and really
being a physical
space for everything
that you're speaking of.
What you're advice
be to us to make sure
that we do that successfully?
ERIC KLINENBERG: Yeah.
Well, first of all, I'm
so happy that you're
going to do that
because I've been
looking for someone
who would teach me
how to do gifs and Twitter.
AUDIENCE: We can do that.
ERIC KLINENBERG: Can I get that?
Do you cover that?
AUDIENCE: I think so, yeah.
ERIC KLINENBERG: Awesome.
AUDIENCE: 101.
ERIC KLINENBERG: So no,
look, the real issue
is how do you make
sure that people
feel like they're genuinely
invited and wanted and welcome.
Because I've seen this
and time after time when
a corporation moves in and
grudgingly puts in public space
because they have to get the
proper zoning and permitting
and they promise
the city they'll
do that for the community but
give everyone reason to believe
that they're not really wanted
there, it doesn't really work,
and people read that.
Or I've seen
cultural institutions
like new museums and art
galleries come in and say
we want to be a part
of the neighborhood,
and so it's going to be free
here on Fridays from 6 to 10
or whatever.
Every Friday's free or free
for a neighborhood and people
don't come.
And then they go why--
we made it free.
Unfortunately,
often the only way
you get a successful
public space in a place
that is known to be
private and for insiders
is if you very aggressively
do outreach and make
sure that people around you
know that you really mean it,
that you're really
there for them.
And that means understanding
in every place where
you build something like this
what are the big community
organizations?
Who are the local leaders?
Where's their vulnerability?
How can we address
some of those things?
There's something-- it's
not "Field of Dreams."
You can't just build it.
You really have to do more.
And where I can
see the commitment
of different organizations
to that doing more
is when I look at how they're
staffing those programs.
Who are they hiring?
How much time are they
dedicating to really making
those things work?
And we live at a
time when I think
everyone knows that you have
to walk through the motions
to get some things
publicly approved,
but not everybody knows
that they're really wanted.
And so if you come
to a neighborhood
and you make that
genuine commitment,
I think people
will be impressed.
And I've seen companies
like Google do it well,
and I've seen companies
like Google swing and miss.
So I hope you do it well.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
I'd like to follow
up on the fact
that you described we have those
wonderful workspaces at Google
and Facebook and
that contributes
to that social infrastructure.
Those things are not easily
scalable and replicable
because one, they
cost a lot of money,
but also they're not perfect.
Even in a workplace like
those tech companies,
yes, we run into each
other as employees,
but there's a gap between us
and the people who maintains
those spaces and serve us.
And we don't feel like real
community in that sense.
So the physical space is
not a miracle on its own.
It's one ingredient.
And [INAUDIBLE]---- do you
see that technology can help
providing a social
infrastructure on it's own
without having to
rebuild stuff around us?
And, for example,
I've been living
in this New York
building for 10 years
and I hardly know my neighbors.
We have doors which
are separating us.
If we take down those
doors, most likely
there's going to be
a better community.
But using technology can do
something to bring us together
in the physical world.
ERIC KLINENBERG: Very much.
Absolutely.
So I wrote this book with
a comedian about dating,
and we talked a lot
about online dating.
And clearly it's much easier
to find dates with Tinder
than it was before Tinder
existed or OKCupid or Bumble
or whatever it is
that you're doing now.
And still like some people
spend too much time online
and not enough time
dating because it's easier
just to be in the phone
swiping left and right than it
is to actually do the date.
But do I think that
the internet can
help to bring people together?
Yes.
Let me give you two examples
of things that I think
are really awesome.
For very local
neighborhood things,
Next Door is a very smart--
I don't know-- do I call
it an app or website?
Well, I'm going
to call it an app.
It's-- I like the way that it is
oriented towards helping people
make connections with people
around them to solve common
problems or to share.
And it seems to me like
it's a very effective tool.
My family and I moved
to Silicon Valley
a few years ago for a year.
And it was really striking
how much people relied on
Next Door there because
the scale of the place
made it work really well.
Doesn't work too well on 15th
Street, but it could probably.
It just be get swamped.
The other thing is like last
year, very unfortunately,
I had three very dear
friends get cancer.
And have any of you used
this website Caring Bridge?
Do you know what
Caring Bridge, which
allows you to build a community
around someone's care?
So someone you know
gets very sick.
Someone else or
that person starts
a caring bridge program
where the person can explain
what's going on with them or
their primary caretaker can
explain or anyone who's
authorized to post can post.
You can use it to
organize who's going
to deliver meals, who's
going to visit the hospital,
how to support one another.
And I can't tell you how
powerful this website was
in allowing me to understand
what my friends were going
through and figure out how to
be a better friend and better
supporter, not just
to the sick person
but also to the people who are
on the front lines of care,
which can also be exhausting.
And I thought that's
a genius technology.
And I actually don't need to be
face to face with those people
all the time, but the connection
through stories and sharing
information in Caring
Bridge worked really well.
Those for me like
work much better
than Twitter or Instagram
or Facebook even or Google
Hangouts.
Do you guys still have that?
I don't know.
It just-- those technologies
don't work as well.
So I think there are
cases in which not having
the face-to-face thing
can do a lot of good.
But for the most part, what
I look for from technology
is something that's going to
make it easier and more likely
that I will meet up with
someone face to face.
And I think there's a
real value in recovering
that kind of face-to-face
interpersonal experience.
It tends to generate a
level of depth and meaning
and significance that
makes us all feel
more satisfied and more human.
And when we spend too much
time with our machines,
I think we tend to feel
alienated from ourselves.
At least that's my experience.
I don't know how you
guys experience it.
But everybody I know is trying
to solve the problem of how
to spend less time with
their machines and more time
with other people.
Yeah, there's a
question in the back.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Eric.
I'm curious to know
what do you think
the role of religious
institutions
are in the social
infrastructure.
And then another
question related
to that is do you think
there is a causal factor that
is cause for the decline
in both the libraries
and religious institutions?
ERIC KLINENBERG: So
I do think there's
a role for religious
organizations
and for other
nonprofit organizations
and for for-profit organizations
and social infrastructure.
I think we have such
profound deficits
in our social infrastructure,
and given the nature
of inequality, I think our
only real hope for addressing
the deficiencies in
social infrastructure
is to do more public investment.
But that said-- and it's a
realm of democratic politics
where we have some collective
say as citizens and voters.
But that said, how
could you go to England
and not recognize
that the pub, which
is a for-profit institution,
is a central part
of the social infrastructure?
Or how could you go to an
African-American neighborhood
in Chicago where
I grew up and not
see that the beauty salon or
the barbershop is a key place,
and those are for-profit
institutions and the diner
and things like that.
Religious organizations,
classic social infrastructure.
In fact the chapter in my book
that's about climate change
as a problem of building a
collective to manage something
collaboratively begins with the
story of an evangelical church
in Houston that made a
principled commitment
to be a multi-ethnic,
multiracial community.
And because of its
strengths and deep ties
was able to do tremendous work
in the immediate aftermath
of Hurricane Harvey
1 and 1/2 years ago.
And so I think
religious organizations
can play a central role.
Now the issue with
religious organizations
and also with
private sector places
is that they have the
capacity to get exclusive.
Some cases their exclusive
by definition, and that
means they might
not serve everyone.
They might help only
members of a group.
And in some cases, you
might have a religious group
that says principally it
will help people in its group
and exclude others.
It turns out this
church in Houston
did the opposite even during
this event, which is great.
But they're very exclusive
religious organizations
as we know of all varieties.
And then you guys
all know the story
of what happened in Starbucks in
Philadelphia this past summer.
Do you remember that experience?
A lot of people,
it was Starbucks
is a like a third space.
It's practically a
public space now.
Except for that in
Philadelphia this past summer,
these two African-American guys
went to meet a friend and--
has ever happened to you?
You go to a place
to meet a friend,
and your friend is late.
Has anyone ad that
experience ever?
You're like, no, that's
never happened to me.
So this-- their friend is
late, and they're waiting--
I was just giving a talk at
a university a few weeks ago,
and I asked the students if
they knew about the story--
about what happened.
And one student was like,
yeah, I know what happened.
They kicked him out.
And I thought to myself it would
have been such a great thing
if they had just kicked
them out, if they had said,
please, gentlemen,
we have a rule here
that you have to order if you're
going to sit in Starbucks.
So we invite you to come
and buy one of our coffees.
Or worse would have been to say
I'm sorry you have to leave,
but instead--
I'm bringing you
with me everywhere
I speak from now on--
they said-- they
called the police.
They called the
police on these guys.
And it-- because it
was captured on video,
it conveyed this fact that
all of us know and many of us
experience which is that
private spaces, nonprofit
or for profit, can
be inaccessible.
And in Seward Park, it's if
you don't have a credit card,
you can't go to
Grumpy's for coffee.
But the truth is I could be a
70-year-old Chinese immigrant
or native-born person who's
lived my life in Seward Park,
and I know that Mission
Chinese is not for me.
And then I'm not really
wanted in Mission Chinese.
The buildings themselves,
the stores, the companies,
they tell you who's welcome
and who's not welcome.
It's very clear to us.
We can all read
that kind of thing.
So the trick for these
places is to make themselves
as accessible as possible to
signal as much as possible
that people are welcome.
And not every place has
to be a democratic social
infrastructure,
but if we want them
to be like social
infrastructures,
they have to do that.
Is there like a
single line that's
causing the decline in
religious membership
and also the decline
in libraries?
I think there are
different lines probably.
And actually religious
institutions in the US
are surprisingly robust.
It's that I think
church participation is
probably not what it
once was, but there's
a tremendous number of
people in this country who
keep on going to church.
Libraries, I want you to know,
are buzzing with activity.
The library usage
rates are soaring.
And it might be the case
that people don't take out
books as much, but
who other than you
guys who are going to be
so involved reading my book
and for the next two
weeks is actually
reading a book right now?
People-- we live in a different
cultural moment, and people
are consuming information
in different ways.
But people are using libraries
in all these amazing ways
that I hadn't expected.
So it remains a place where
early literacy education
happens.
And libraries are
teaching more people
English as a second
language than
any other public institution.
They're doing
citizenship classes.
They're providing connection and
companionship for older people.
They're places where people
get free Wi-Fi access.
And people learn how
to use computers.
It's actually really interesting
to see how many people don't
know how to do email
and go to a library
and have the librarian
help them with email.
But librarians are solving
all kinds of problems
and enormous numbers of
people are using them in part
because we haven't supported
other social infrastructures
or invested enough in
other protected programs.
And so if you spend time
in a neighborhood library,
I think what you'll observe
is that libraries are overrun
actually.
And it's one reason
that I have been hoping
that some great philanthropist
or political leader
will make the kind of
commitment to the library
that Carnegie made
100 years ago.
Because we don't
have that vision yet.
We have not had a compelling
leader make the case
that the solution to our
crisis in civil society
is to make a major
investment in shared spaces.
And until that
happens, I think we're
going to stay very much in
the crisis that we have now.
Are we going to end
on that sad note?
I want to end on a happier
note like free ice cream
across the hall.
JESSE HAINES: Thank you so much.
ERIC KLINENBERG: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
