Andrew Carnegie’s ‘Palaces for the People’ and Our Declining Social Infrastructure
When was the last time you visited a park or a library? Does your answer surprise you? It’s okay to admit that we do not utilize these facilities enough. I myself have skipped out on visiting the library on one-too many occasions. But is there an underlying cost?
Eric Klinenberg is the author of the book “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.” In his book, he details the confluence of civil engineering and social science and how our structures can be built to reduce crime and inequality, foster social interactions and communities, provide a means of improving job prospects through education and networking and reduce the impact of weather emergencies. It may also provide a solution for the polarization in our politics.
Although Klinenberg saw enormous opportunity in these public spaces, he also noted that these spaces were disappearing. More and more people view libraries as obsolete and outdated institutions, turning towards more private activities centered around phones, televisions and computers. Libraries and other public infrastructure have seen a steady decrease in investments, leading some to crumble or shutter. Unsurprisingly, the most recent evaluation by the American Society for Civil Engineers gave America’s overall infrastructure a score of D+.
Libraries of today have had to adapt in order to draw more people, often for the better. Today, libraries are places for teenagers to gather to play video games or for people to gather for karaoke night. They are also the most common places where people can study for citizenship tests, learn English, and search for jobs. Much to the chagrin of those searching for a quiet space to read, the very same media drawing people away from libraries is increasingly finding its way into libraries (often in the form of “teen areas”). I find it to be an encouraging reminder of the times and how we can adapt these spaces rather than seeing them go to waste.
Andrew Carnegie was an industrialist and philanthropist known equally for his humanitarian activism and his ruthless pursuit of wealth. Carnegie’s legacy of philanthropy carries on in the form of the 3,000 public libraries he helped establish in the United States, Canada, and other English-speaking countries. However, during the Homestead Strike of 1892, Carnegie sent Pinkerton guards to break up the bloodiest labor strike in U.S. history. By some accounts, his patronage justified what he had done to become one of the richest men in the United States. On his deathbed in 1919, he donated $350 million to various causes and writing the “Andrew Carnegie Dictum” which urges readers to acquire as much education and wealth as possible before giving it charity in old age.
He eschewed terms like laissez-faire economics, capitalism, and survival of the fittest. Libraries, in Carnegie’s world, would enable individuals to reach their full potential. Carnegie loved the idea of self-improvement and self-preservation, that libraries could be a place where a worker could go and become the leaders of tomorrow. He viewed citizens as workers by day and intellectuals by night. This ideal is reflected in the architecture of the libraries he helped found which contain wide arches, enormous ceilings, big windows, and spacious rooms. Each library is practically a work of art in itself and has become the quintessential library found in most major cities. The greatest of all his libraries were termed “Palaces for the People.” Yet this ideal was hampered by the fact that they were racially segregated for the first half of the early 20th century.
Yet Andrew Carnegie, in all his wisdom, could not predict the way society would progress and how far America’s infrastructure would decline. The libraries of today have wi-fi and televisions which bring us information in a way that nobody in the early 1900’s could have predicted. The titans of industry of the past have given way to the social media and tech giants of today. Many of these new colossi have been philanthropic in nature, but they do not contribute towards our collapsing social infrastructure, preferring instead to invest in their own semi-private spaces otherwise known as Third Places which require a fee just to sit down.
Klinenberg cites Mark Zuckerburg’s Menlo Park as a prime example of a Third Place that does not have prohibitive fees, but results in the displacement of nearby residents due to gentrification. Menlo Park promotes Facebook and their online community, to the detriment of the local social infrastructure. Despite representing the best that libraries of the modern age could be, the placement of these libraries is also fundamentally inadequate and unsustainable due to the fact that they are randomly distributed to places where the philanthropists themselves reside, rather than where they are most needed.
The bottom line is that our social infrastructure needs further attention, and not by wealthy philanthropists, but us as taxpayers. When we neglect our social infrastructures, we grow more isolated. Our government, whether local or national, needs to refocus on these communities to prevent them from crumbling away. It may mean going out of our way to visit our local library or our public parks from time to time and, yes, even getting off our phones. It means discovering a new book, or a conversation about a topic that matters most to us, or perhaps playing a game with our friends.
[1]Andrew Carnegie. (2019, March 18). Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
[2]Alternatives. (n.d.). Retrieved March 21, 2019, from http://institutional.aberdeen-asset.us/en/alternatives/infrastructure/what-is-social-infrastructure
[3]Florida, R. (2018, September 11). Why ‘Social Infrastructure’ Is the Key to Renewing Civil Society. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/09/how-social-infrastructure-can-knit-america-together/569854/
[4]FitzGerald, E. (n.d.). Palaces for the People. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-people/
[5]Klinenberg, E. (2018, September 20). The ‘Social Infrastructure’ That Makes Democracy Possible Is Falling Apart. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/worry-less-about-crumbling-roads-more-about-crumbling-libraries/570721/
