Sam on “Third Places”

I come from a small island called the United Kingdom. We love privacy. Perhaps the only other country to display such reserved sensibilities is Japan, where people also share a small water-locked slither of land.

In light of this I’ve always admired America’s more outgoing culture. I figured the early settlers understood that if they were going to conquer this brave new world they were going to have to talk to strangers, leading the way to a land more prone to celebrating extroversion and openness.

But Oldenburg is right to lament modern suburbia. The ‘private’ space afforded by a car has led to a deep re-orientation of public space. Until I came to America, I’d never dreamed of a drive-through ATM.

Cities – particularly New York – are often considered unfriendly. I see this as mostly misconceived. New York is probably the most overly-social place in the world. A place where people fulfil three social engagements in one night, and pass on two more. The problem is that this intensity leads people to shut down sharply to strangers, there is only so much inter-personal stimulation a person can handle.

An easy deflection of the author’s critique, particularly 18 years after its writing, is to call the web – and particularly social media – today’s third place. I’d argue there are many nuances to this, some of which I’ve tackled in my own work. Connecting with strangers still requires a set of norms, permissions and affordances. Just because people can connect online, doesn’t mean they will feel comfortable doing so. Also, somewhat ironically, digital services that have had the most impact connecting nearby users really only gain traction in big cities with critical density – suburbunites who could really benefit from nearby networking are likely to encounter empty rooms and virtual tumbleweeds.

Of course, such norms, permissions and affordances are important in the physical plane too. His reference to dog-owners is interesting – in England a pet offers near complete permission to talk to a stranger, though often conversation is directed to the pet rather than the owner. I’m quite sure that millions of people only own pets to afford these kind of encounters, particularly with other pet owners.

I’d never considered that fleeing to ‘Sun Cities’ correlated with a lack of community and purpose post-retirement, but I think he is correct in this insight. However, I’d argue that some of these new retirement communities act as purpose-built third places, full of the kind of interactions he longs for. In this sense, I’m not sure this is a wholly negative development.

A lot of the issues with third places are really economic – with more disposable income people can pay to spend time in shared public (but private) spaces. I’m not sure he addressed this component as much as he might. In posing questions about inclusivity, I think access to third places – and the corresponding benefits he outlines – deserves to be a lens through which such issues are examined.