I keep on going back to this
The concept of “third spaces” by sociologies Ray Oldenburg.
The following content is written by Dom Nozzi.
“What is a “Third Place” and Why Are They Important?
“Social condensers” — the place where citizens of a community or neighborhood meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact with others — have always been an important way in which the community developed and retained cohesion and a sense of identity.
Ray Oldenburg (1989), in The Great Good Place, calls these locations “third places.” (The first being the home and the second being work.) These third places are crucial to a community for a number of reasons, according to Oldenburg. They are distinctive informal gathering places, they make the citizen feel at home, they nourish relationships and a diversity of human contact, they help create a sense of place and community, they invoke a sense of civic pride, they provide numerous opportunities for serendipity, they promote companionship, they allow people to relax and unwind after a long day at work, they are socially binding, they encourage sociability instead of isolation, they make life more colorful, and they enrich public life and democracy. Their disappearance in our culture is unhealthy for our cities because, as Oldenburg points out, they are the bedrock of community life and all the benefits that come from such interaction.
There are essential ingredients to a well-functioning third place. They must be free or quite inexpensive to enter and purchase food and drink within. They must be highly accessible to neighborhoods so that people find it easy to make the place a regular part of their routine — in other words, a lot of people should be able to comfortably walk to the place from their home. They should be a place where a number of people regularly go on a daily basis. It should be a place where the person feels welcome and comfortable, and where it is easy to enter into conversation. And a person who goes there should be able to expect to find both old and new friends each time she or he goes there.
According to Oldenburg, World War II marks the historical juncture after which informal public life began to decline in the U.S. Old neighborhoods and their cafes, taverns, and corner stores have fallen to urban renewal, freeway expansion, and planning that discounts the importance of congenial, unified and vital neighborhoods. The newer neighborhoods have developed under the single-use zoning imperative — which makes these critical, informal social gathering places illegal.
Oldenburg points out that segregation, isolation, compartmentalization and sterilization seem to be the guiding principles of urban growth and urban renewal. In the final analysis, desirable experiences occur in places conducive to them, or they do not occur at all. When certain kinds of places disappear, certain experiences also disappear.”
March 10th, 2005 at 1:22 am
I also asked the question of how family disintegration affects the idea of “third place,” as well as the question of how our altering our ‘place’ on this earth has changed our need for a sense of connection. Is the need for a “third space” stronger now with so many people largely disenfranchised from a sense of home on both a familial and environmental level?
How many people feel the importance of their environment as part of their home? How many people know the types of trees within view of their kitchen window? How many are aware of the phase of the moon, or which direction’s north, or even realize or care that the same damned birds, squirrels and raccoons that rip open the plastic trash bags waiting to make their way to the dumpster are not just random creatures, but the SAME characters every time — they’re our NEIGHBORS! Hell, it’s even possible to develop relationships with them!
I posit that this need for a ‘third space’ does, in part, arise from people becoming increasingly disassociated from each other and from the earth and its other inhabitants. I’m not suggesting that everyone run out and hug a tree and we’ll all feel a sense of community, but perhaps consider larger issues which breed our needs and look into meeting some of those… and then wander down to the nearest WiFi cafȆ°nd discuss it there!