Acceptable losses

The residents, often old people who have "aged in place" -- that is, stayed in the neighborhoods where they lived while their friends and family in the neighborhood have either died or moved -- are afraid to open their doors to strangers. They are often afraid to go out on the street. When fear is a permanent condition of life, as Klinenberg points out, the social structures that create a true neighborhood -- the businesses that provide for, in Jane Jacobs' phrase, "eyes on the street;" neighbors who aren't afraid to visit one another or sit on their stoops; churches that link people to a social circle -- can't exist. And since police in Chicago are not assigned to patrol areas in quantities that take account of the crime rate, the cops who work North Lawndale often have shifts that are strings of arrests with no chance to develop ties with the community or to get to know the residents' routines.

Little Village has approximately the same poverty rate as North Lawndale. But this predominately Latino area has a thriving business district (including street vendors) that allows for busy, and thus safer, street life. Moreover, the area's stability and ability to provide jobs have meant that generations of the same families often live close to each other. Klinenberg's account suggests that even the Little Village residents who have "aged in place" are not cut off from their neighbors. And because they feel safe walking the streets, going to church or to the markets, they don't live in isolation.

"Heat Wave" is not the easiest book to read. As befits his discipline, Klinenberg uses sociological jargon that isn't always graceful or concise. But the occasional clumsiness of his language is small potatoes next to his compassion, his reason, his refusal to demonize even the most foolish people here and his insistence that the deaths in Chicago were rooted in government's abandonment of responsibility and in the breakdown of the social structures that keep people in touch with their neighbors and communities.

Klinenberg is too gentlemanly to pat himself on the back even when he could. His analysis of how the Chicago media handled the story, how they relied on those in power for their information and thus parroted official "wisdom," and his understanding of the way the news cycle continuously drops developing stories in favor of new ones, suggests why the story of the 1995 heat wave had to be written by a sociologist. (For example, the Chicago media regularly talked about the "debate" over what caused the deaths. But there was no debate: There was scientific fact and there were Mayor Daley's efforts to cover his ass.)

Klinenberg doesn't offer solutions, though a few basic ones seem obvious. If we believe that one of the functions of housing is to give people shelter from the elements, then in areas subject to severe heat, air conditioners should be considered as necessary to health and safety as heat or smoke detectors are, and landlords should be required to provide units that meet a standard of efficient performance (costlier to buy, cheaper to use). Congress should be pressured to restore funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which would help seniors and the sick afford to use air conditioning. (Some of the dead actually had units but, subsisting on a fixed income, couldn't afford to turn them on.) While hundreds were dying in Chicago during that week in 1995, the Republican-controlled Senate was pushing to scrap the program, but settled for cutting $100 million from its budget.

But even those measures won't address what Klinenberg sees as the crisis of isolation that affects so many city residents, a crisis that will only be exacerbated as the idea of government as business, regardless of the human cost, becomes further entrenched. During the upheavals of the '60s, politicians in big cities used to talk with trepidation each spring of the long hot summer ahead. "Heat Wave" shows how, in the name of governmental efficiency, one group of politicians rode out a long, hot summer while conveniently ignoring the corpses piling up at their door.

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