The Institute for Public Knowledge has launched an ambitious, comparative project on how social infrastructure shapes cities and communities, with a focus on climate change, inequality, belonging, and civic life. Social infrastructure refers to the physical places and organizations that shape conditions for collective life. In the public sector, libraries, parks, playgrounds, schools, swimming pools, and athletic facilities are prominent forms of social infrastructure. In the private and nonprofit sectors, social infrastructure includes the community organizations, places of worship, YMCAs, coffee shops, beauty salons, bars, and restaurants. Social infrastructure can foster both bonding within groups and bridging across groups. It’s not always inclusive, however, nor is it always beneficial, since more exclusive forms of social infrastructure can contribute to polarization, inequality, even violence. This project aims to advance knowledge about the ways social infrastructure matters in four distinct New York communities, to develop better theories about the sources of social cohesion and division, and to identify concrete social infrastructure projects that will improve the quality of life in our research sites.

A large team of researchers from IPK is involved in this project, as is a team of researchers and designers from Gehl, a global urban strategy and design firm. Eric Klinenberg, the director of IPK, is the principal investigator. Two postdoctoral fellows, Nan Feng and Matt Wolfe, are conducting original research, both qualitative and quantitative, across the state. Michael Koncewicz, the associate director, of IPK, is both managing and participating in the research process. Additional members of the team will be added as the research progresses.

Eric Klinenberg
Project Lead
Eric Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. His most recent book is 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, and his other books include Heat Wave, Fighting for Air, Going Solo, and Palaces for the People.

Michael Koncewicz
Associate Director
Michael Koncewicz is the Associate Director at the Institute for Public Knowledge, where he develops, implements, and manages programmatic and administrative operations for IPK in collaboration with the Director. Koncewicz’s scholarship focuses on the culture and politics of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. His first book, They Said ‘No’ to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power was published by the University of California Press in 2018. He is currently working on an authorized biography of longtime progressive activist Tom Hayden. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Jacobin, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The Washington Post.

Nan Feng
Postdoctoral Researcher, Cities, Communities, and Social Infrastructure
Nan Feng is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. She received her PhD in Sociology from Cornell University in 2024. She studies how inequality shapes and is shaped by social networks. She pursues this inquiry through three interrelated lines of research. The first line of research addresses inequality in social capital and social integration within large social collectivities. The second line of research investigates how social networks reinforce socio-economic disadvantage and the resulting impact on health. The third line of research explores the role of geographic proximity in high-stakes business relationships within America’s venture capital market.

Matt Wolfe
Postdoctoral Researcher, Cities, Communities, and Social Infrastructure
Matthew Wolfe is a National Fellow at New America, where he is currently writing a narrative nonfiction book, for Viking Press, on the Earth Liberation Front and radical environmentalism in the context of the current climate crisis. In 2023, he received a PhD in sociology from New York University, where he researched the social patterning of and societal reaction to missing persons. His academic research has appeared in Theory and Society, BMJ Global Health, and Social Research. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New Republic.