However, there's a lot of what engineers would call "tech debt" in that area. Make libraries more like community centers, and you have to deal with an inrush of people who have been rejected by other parts of the failing social safety nets in their lives. In the process of trying to pay that debt, many libraries are judged (ignorantly, I believe) as havens for the crazy or hostile.
It's a MUCH bigger problem than just "make $x space better/safer/more accomodating", though that is part of it.
I don't think this helps. It's not just having a space to meet. It's having a reason to meet. Without the unifying force of religion or another philosophy, we invariably devolve into family-based group identity, which is another word for ethnonationalism or identity politics.
Identity politics, perhaps. Ethnonationalism, I don't think is an inherent part of it, as is seen in the universal audience of certain major religions, like Islam and Christianity
This is happening a lot across the US, but should happen more. And doing so doesn't put the books part at risk, as some fear; and it might turn people on to books by proximity.
