Eric Klinenberg
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Articles by Eric Klinenberg
What It Takes to Save a Town from Wildfire
In 1991, when the city of Boulder asked Larry Donner to become its fire chief, he couldn’t believe his luck. A Denver native, Donner was forty-two and working as the fire chief of Iowa City. He and his wife, Susan Loo, missed the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains: rolling meadows, colorful wildflowers, dense forests, rushing creeks. They also missed the outdoor adventures and the community that came with them.
Europe Isn’t Built for This Heat
The Continent is warming at a rate more than twice the global average. Can its cities stave off the even deadlier temperatures to come?Illustration by Matteo Berton This May, my eighty-four-year-old Francophone father and his seventy-year-old wife realized a lifelong dream: they rented an apartment in Paris and moved there for a month of adventure and romance. A barrage of joyful photographs—Montmartre! Couscous! The Place des Vosges!—filled my inbox. Then I saw the forecast.
The End of the European Summer
In late May, Jannik Sinner, the world’s top-ranked men’s-tennis player, was closing out a dominant second-round performance against Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, ranked fifty-sixth, at Roland Garros. The French Open, as English speakers tend to call it, takes place during a traditionally splendid time of the year, when Parisians delight in the temperate air.
Sustaining the Joyful City: A New York City Social Infrastructure Agenda
Mamdani needs a comprehensive strategy to connect New Yorkers in the physical spaces where we interact. On Saturday, the New York Knicks won the NBA Championship, and the people of New York City experienced a weekend of collective effervescence and joy. Great athletes created the extraordinary moment. But so did the city’s open, accessible and welcoming public spaces — the sidewalks, streets, parks and plazas that gave everyone a place to gather and celebrate in a communal environment.
Can Sponge Cities Save Us from the Coming Floods?
On October 29, 2025, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released an update to its Climate Resilience Roadmap. In the previous eighteen months, six floods, six heat waves, and the driest month on record had exposed weaknesses in the transit network. The M.T.A. proposed familiar remedies: $1.5 billion for upgraded flood controls, like high-capacity pumps and elevated station entrances.
The 2025 Summer of Democracy Reading List
Each Memorial Day, Civic Nebraska welcomes the season with the Summer of Democracy Reading List, a collection of thought-provoking titles nominated by Nebraskans from all walks of life. Now in its eighth year, the 2025 list features fresh nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books that explore democracy, civic life, U.S. history, and social justice.
The 2025 Summer of Democracy Reading List
Each Memorial Day, Civic Nebraska welcomes the season with the Summer of Democracy Reading List, a collection of thought-provoking titles nominated by Nebraskans from all walks of life. Now in its eighth year, the 2025 list features fresh nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books that explore democracy, civic life, U.S. history, and social justice.
It’s Time to Name Heat Waves Like Hurricanes - The New York Times Original
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. It’s Time to Name Heat Waves Like We Do Hurricanes Credit...Gabriel Alcala Mr. Klinenberg is a sociologist and the author of “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.” This article was first published on Sept. 7, 2024.
The social life of climate projects
• . . How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens . : University of Chicago Press. • . . “ Democracy Underwater: Public Participation, Technical Expertise, and Climate Infrastructure Planning in New York City .” Theory and Society ( ): – . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09459-9. • . . “ Climate State: Science-State Struggles and the Formation of Climate Science in the US from the 1930s to 1960s .” Social Studies of Science ( ): – .
Books exploring the Health-Environment Link
Fact checked by Shannon Sparks Chicago has seven medical schools, multiple highly rated hospitals and academic medical centers, and numerous healthcare associations. This hub of medical excellence has also played a role in key events in medical and public health history. If you’re curious about Chicago’s role in healthcare, check out these five medical-themed books with ties to the city.
You Really Are Better Now Than You Were Four Years Ago
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the beginning of a new conference with members of the coronavirus task force, including Vice President Mike Pence in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House February 26, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump updated the American people about what his administration's 'whole of government' response to the global coronavirus outbreak.
You Really Are Better Now Than You Were Four Years Ago
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the beginning of a new conference with members of the coronavirus task force, including Vice President Mike Pence in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House February 26, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump updated the American people about what his administration's 'whole of government' response to the global coronavirus outbreak.
You Really Are Better Now Than You Were Four Years Ago Original
Ideas March 22, 2024 12:02 PM EDT Klinenberg, the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, is the author of 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed.
Mark Honigsbaum - Journal of the Plague Year
In the spring of 2020, New York briefly found itself at the centre of the biggest plague to visit the world in more than a century. The coronavirus ripped through the city’s crowded tower blocks, and hospital emergency rooms were filled with desperately ill patients. Ironically, no neighbourhood was worse affected than Corona in Queens. By the second week of April, the Covid-19 mortality rate in Corona was 85 per 100,000 residents, more than twice the city average.
Iraq on the Day After US Withdrawal, Again
We are back at the hypothetical press conference held by a senior US official after the conclusion of the American National Security Council meeting in which the US administration has announced that the last remaining US troops were pulled out of Iraq.
Ukraine: Putin’s Mixed Messages
Two years already! And how much longer? This is what comes to mind as the war in Ukraine enters its third year with no prospect of an end in sight. Because war is a matter of here-and-now one shouldn’t expect those who fight it to think of its aftermath. Belligerents who do so often end up losing the war. In the current war the stakes are so high that imagining an end of it in terms of winner-and-loser is mind-boggling.
The PA And The PLO
Regardless of the polls showing a decline in popular support, and despite ongoing excavation efforts to dig up a body to run things after this war, particularly in Gaza, bets are on the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization once again. Both are organs of a single body that enjoys Palestinian, regional, and international legitimacy.
We Were Wrong About What Happened to America in 2020
Covid numbers recently climbed again. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once again reported monthly death tolls in the thousands. Mask mandates are back in New York City’s public medical facilities and nursing homes. The presidential race has kicked into gear, and just as in 2020, the stakes seem existential. It all makes me feel I’m revisiting a past I never actually left. I’m not the only one wrestling with that feeling. In other ways, 2020 seems like another lifetime.
The Year Everything Changed with Eric Klinenberg on Apple Podcasts
2020 was undoubtedly one of the most consequential years in history. The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other cascading crises, can still be felt in almost every facet of our lives. Our guest this week points out that in order to heal, we must take time to reckon with what we lived through.
20-Somethings Lost Something in the Pandemic. They Still Haven't Found It
A student wears a mask to protect against the spread of COVID-19 as she worked on her laptop outside at Boston University, on Sept. 23, 2020. Credit - Jessica Rinaldi—The Boston Globe/Getty Images In January, 2020, Luis was 21 and beginning the second semester of his junior year at a public university in New York City. He lived with family in Queens, and everyone pitched in to make ends meet. His father was retired. His mother collected disability insurance.
The Pandemic Sacrifices of 20-Somethings
More Must-Reads From TIME East Palestine, One Year After Train Derailment How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab The Closers: 18 People Working to End the Racial Wealth Gap The Enduring Appeal of Usher An Alternative Guide for Valentine’s Day Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise Taylor Swift Is TIME's 2023 Person of the Year Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More?
Eric Klinenberg’s ‘2020’ on COVID’s New York Legacy
Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo teaches migrants about their rights as asylum seekers from her home in Jackson Heights. Photo: Andy Zalkin This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. On a recent Wednesday morning, 56 asylum seekers from South America were packed into the Jackson Heights Immigrant Center waiting for Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo to appear.
Eric Klinenberg’s ‘2020’ on COVID’s New York Legacy
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Madrid Nuevo Norte: el futuro está en el barrio
Para prepararnos para el futuro debemos evolucionar algunas de las ideas que han imperado en el siglo XX. Las ciudades, en tanto que espacios de innovación, nos brindan grandes posibilidades de responder a los nuevos retos y necesidades sociales. ¿QUIERES COLABORAR CON ETHIC?
Closed doors: Domestic space, household labor, and the reproduction of gender inequality in the pandemic lockdown
REFERENCES , , , and . 2020. The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality. National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26947/w26947.pdf. , , , , , , , and . 2022. “The Gendered Division of Paid and Domestic Work under Lockdown.” Fiscal Studies 43(4): 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12312. . 2021. “A Feminist Public Sociology of the Pandemic: Interviewing about a Crisis, during a Crisis.” Gender, Work and Organization 28(S2): 321–329.
Americans Can’t Decide What It Means to Grow Up
Recently, someone I’m close to made a confession: He felt embarrassed to still be living with roommates in his early 30s. I assured him that was absurd, but given that I also live with two of my friends, I knew what he meant; I’ve noticed the same societal clock ticking, and I’m a few years younger.
The sociology of heat
The headline is familiar: Another hottest summer on record. Across Europe and the UK as well as in India, Pakistan, and Japan, ancient cities became nearly unlivable. Outdoor events were cancelled; subway cars became unbearable furnaces; and airplanes had to be rerouted when asphalt melted on the runways. China reported the worst heat wave in world history, which, combined with a severe drought, dried up the mighty Yangtze River.
La sociología del calor
El titular es familiar: otro de los veranos más calurosos de los que se tiene constancia. En toda Europa y en el Reino Unido, así como en India, Pakistán y Japón, las ciudades se han convertido casi en inhabitables. Se han cancelado eventos al aire libre, los vagones del metro se han vuelto hornos insoportables y los aviones han sido desviados cuando el asfalto se derretía en las pistas.
Palacios del pueblo
Sinopsis Vivimos en una época de profundas divisiones. Los estadounidenses se están clasificando por líneas raciales, religiosas y culturales, lo que lleva a un nivel de polarización nunca visto desde la guerra civil. Expertos y políticos nos piden que nos unamos y encontremos un propósito común. Pero ¿cómo, exactamente, se puede hacer esto? En Palacios del pueblo, el sociólogo Eric Klinenberg sugiere un camino.
Heat and drought: Europe's new normal
In Portugal, there is the danger of a repeat of the devastating forest fires of 2017, writes Correio da Manhã: “The weather conditions this week are propitious for the spread of fires, with temperatures above 30 degrees, strong winds and almost zero humidity. But this could be avoided - if the inland regions were not increasingly abandoned and forgotten. ... Five years after the apocalypse of 2017, little has been done.
Climate crisis in Europe: how to cope with heat and drought?
In Portugal, there is the danger of a repeat of the devastating forest fires of 2017, writes Correio da Manhã: “The weather conditions this week are propitious for the spread of fires, with temperatures above 30 degrees, strong winds and almost zero humidity. But this could be avoided - if the inland regions were not increasingly abandoned and forgotten. ... Five years after the apocalypse of 2017, little has been done.
The Best Books on Libraries
Before we get to the books about libraries you’ve chosen, I wanted to ask what might seem like an obvious question, but I’m not sure that it is as obvious as I thought: What is a library? I say that it’s an organized body of knowledge. You can also have other organized bodies of knowledge, like archives, which are different to libraries, or indeed, things like Wikipedia.
NY - The Seas Are Rising. Could Oysters Help?
How a landscape architect is enlisting nature to defend our coastal cities against climate change—and doing it on the cheap. On a windy afternoon in April, the landscape architect Kate Orff stood on the open walkway of a container crane, some eighty feet above the Red Hook Terminal, in Brooklyn, and the Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait on the southeast side of Governors Island.
The Seas Are Rising. Could Oysters Protect Us?
Orff’s submission, called “Oyster-Tecture,” imagined a living reef in the canal made of tangles and webs of fuzzy rope that, by harnessing the filtration powers of shellfish and eelgrass, would help support a resurgence of aquatic biodiversity.
Opinion | Infrastructure Isn’t Really About Roads. It’s About the Society We Want.
Guest Essay April 26, 2021, 3:00 p.m. ET Playgrounds and other social infrastructure can help foster human interaction and collective life.Credit...Yana Paskova for The New York Times By Eric Klinenberg Dr. Klinenberg is a professor of sociology at New York University whose research focuses on cities, inequality and health. He is the author, most recently, of “Palaces for the People,” a book about the importance of social infrastructure.
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
This extract from Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg (Published September 2018), is part of a series in which OECD experts and thought leaders — from around the world and all parts of society — address the COVID-19 crisis, discussing and developing solutions now and for the future.
Rebuilding Solidarity in a Broken World
New York City, where I live, was one of the most dangerous places on Earth during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. At the peak of the outbreak’s first wave, hospitals were overwhelmed. There were shortages of basic health supplies, including surgical gowns, masks, and ventilators. Nurses wore garbage bags to protect themselves. A convention center, a church, a tennis complex, and patches of Central Park were converted into emergency medical facilities.
Modern Love: 6 Books on Dating by Today's Rules
It used to be that you could find a suitable mate through family, friends or activities out in the community that brought you in contact with people who shared something in common with you - whether it be a mutual acquaintance or a mutual love
A Disaster 100 Years in the Making
Tyrone Turner/National Geographic A house damaged by Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, 2005 “I ain’t proud to be American no more,” Dean Blanchard, a shrimp distributor, told a reporter in 2015.1 Ten years earlier, his business was nearly ruined when Katrina, one of the most ferocious hurricanes in American history, pummeled New Orleans, killing at least 1,440 people and causing $150–$200 billion in economic damage, including nearly $1.5 billion to the local seafood...
Eric Klinenberg · Neo-Catastrophism: Sinful Cities? · LRB 9 October 2003
In the 1990s New York was the capital city of America’s economic boom: now it is the epicentre of urban insecurity. The city is familiar with crisis, however, and no one could say it had surrendered to the new and old dangers it faces.
Opinion | How Libraries Can Save the 2020 Election
They are among our last trusted institutions. Expanding early voting at local branches may be our best hope for a trusted outcome. Sept. 3, 2020 A polling station at a public library in the Lake View Terrace neighborhood of Los Angeles.Credit...Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Eric Klinenberg Dr. Klinenberg is a sociologist at New York University.
Florida’s Flooded Future: ‘Retreat While There’s Still Time’
With sea levels rising, Miami will be underwater by the end of the century. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark June 8, 2020 A woman walks in floodwater in Miami on May 26, 2020. (Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images) Florida’s time of climate change denial is over. You can buy mugs in Miami Beach souvenir shops that show a map of the world. Pour in a hot liquid, and Florida disappears.
What’s the Future?
Day 1: Personal The New Normal Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Age of the Coronavirus Tuesday, April 27, 2020, 3pm to 5pm EST Angela Duckworth #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Grit COVID-19 is changing everything from our day-to-day schedules and personal habits, to our ideas of success, creativity, and purpose.
The Great Green Hope
The Great Green Hope On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein Simon and Schuster, 309 pp., $27.00; $18.00 (paper) This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth by Jedediah Purdy Princeton University Press, 164 pp., $19.95 A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, with a foreword by Naomi Klein Verso, 194 pp., $19.95 (paper) Illustration by Molly Crabapple Roughly six million...
Roundup Top Ten for March 20, 2020
; 3/20/2020 Roundup tags: Roundup Top Ten The Shortages May Be Worse Than the Disease by Elise A. Mitchell Societies further their own destruction whenever they fail to provide anyone health care, housing, or dispensation from work because of their employment, socioeconomic, or immigration status. Democracy: How 1860 Connects to 2020 by Daniel W. Crofts In the years before the Civil War, just as today, minority rule was the norm.
Opinion | We Need Social Solidarity, Not Just Social Distancing (Published 2020)
To combat the coronavirus, Americans need to do more than secure their own safety. By Eric Klinenberg Dr. Klinenberg is a sociologist.
Sociology and the Climate Crisis
Abstract What would it mean for sociology to make climate change a core disciplinary concern? This article reviews research on a selection of trends brought on by the climate crisis: (a) compounding and cumulative disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and adaptation; (b) intensifying migration and shifting patterns of settlement; and (c) transformations in consumption, labor, and energy.
Sociology and the Climate Crisis
Annual Review of Sociology Vol.
Libraries Are Even More Important to Contemporary Community Than We Thought
Libraries are not the kinds of institutions that social scientists, policy makers, and community leaders usually bring up when they discuss social capital and how to build it. Since Tocqueville, most leading thinkers about social and civic life have extolled the value of voluntary associations like bowling leagues and gardening clubs without looking closely at the physical and material conditions that make people more or less likely to associate.
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