In discussing the Chicago heat wave, Klinenberg approaches it in a socio-economical and political way, surprisingly hypothesizing that the cause of the many deaths were rather a consequence of the government’s bad management of the city’s infrastructures and the welfare system. One would normally infer that such deaths could have been caused by the unpreparedness of the public for a first-time catastrophe of this kind, or maybe by the hospitals’ inability to deal with such a high volume of individuals coming in in a short period of time. So, this reading brings up a few interesting, non-trivial points that allow for a deeper understanding of the socio-political climate in Chicago at the time.

For example, the fact that certain neighborhoods were so dangerous that people would shut the windows in fear of criminals infiltrating into their households which caused the temperature to get so high in these apartments that the elderly citizens would suffocate inside. Here Klinenberg was criticizing the inability of the government to provide safety within the city’s various neighborhoods.

Another interesting point that Klinenberg brings up is that bad neighborhood and public housing planning by the government also contributed to seniors and other groups being isolated as they suffered the extreme temperatures. In fact, race riots and crime kept rising in numbers without little or no interventions by the city officials, causing decadence in these public places and people to thus isolate socially and physically to the point that this disconnection became lethal in the instance of the emergency.

Sara Camnasio