Category Archives: Readings

I spent four years living in Barcelona, a city replete with third places. The outdoor cafe is the most common, and is made possible by large public plazas, typically ringed by small, locally owned establishments. Here’s an example, called Plaza Vila de Gracia:

These plazas are open only to pedestrians and can be found in every neighborhood in the city. Each has its own personality and charm, providing a shared outdoor space for the community living in the area. They’re convenient places to meet before heading off to another location, or to simply sit and people watch with a group of friends.

I suppose I began to take them for granted when I lived there, but since moving back to New York I’ve realized that cities without this “plaza culture” are quite different. In New York, outdoor cafes are almost always found running along the sidewalk, which can crowd both pedestrians and diners. This also normally limits the tables to one single row rather than the grid-like layouts seen in Barcelona, which generally have a more convivial, expansive atmosphere. Psychologically, placing these third places along a busy sidewalk makes them feel less restful and more harried. I believe this detracts from the power of the shared outdoor third space. With more pedestrian plazas, New York could establish its own plaza culture, increasing community engagement and happy encounters throughout the city.

The different take on ‘sense of community’ America has was the first cultural adjustment I found myself making when I moved to New York from Mumbai about a year ago. What the author talks about as a matter of the past or something that seldom exists today was how I lived my life back home. I’ve actually had that third place and I couldn’t help reading this article drifting now and then back to memories of home where my life was dominated by community and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of examples in the article I could relate to.

In Mumbai, I lived in a building complex composed of residential buildings, gardens, a large playground and parking spaces, all enclosed in boundary walls separating us from the rest of the city. Our ‘third place’ wasn’t a coffee shop or a bar but a beautiful seating area-large enough to accommodate about thirty people in the middle of the main garden, opposite which I lived. I remember spending late afternoons as a child looking out of the window waiting for friends to congregate. Everybody knew everybody and what was going on in their lives. New neighbours were personally invited to join us every evening where people of all ages would sit and chat together, sometimes share snacks while children would play. There was also a grocery store which primarily catered to our complex (and delayed payments were not a problem).

We did everything together- celebrated festivals and dealt with problems. One incident the article reminded me of was the time I faced an emergency in the absence of my family and I remember feeling overwhelmed not by the circumstances but by the support I received from my neighbours. From helping me make crucial decisions to insisting on providing all my meals- they took care of everything without me even asking for it.

My thoughts on the article are captured in my blog and also pasted below for convenience.

Oldenburg’s 1997 article “Our Vanishing Third Places” is an interesting take on the function of public space, especially as seen through the lens of the pre-social media era. In it, Oldenburg coined the term “third places” by considering the home as the universal “first place” and the workplace as a “second place.” “Third places,” he wrote, “lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. [They] are nothing more than informal public gathering places.”

The article predates Facebook and the slew of social “spaces” that have emerged across the internet over the past decade. These digital third places fill some of the needs Oldenburg describes throughout the article — perhaps most notably, the need of meeting points for people who share special interests. As Oldenburg harkened back to historic third places like colonial taverns, candy stores, soda fountains and beyond, it became clear that social media filled this need in a unique, unprecedented and important way. It expanded the “local” to what Marshall McLuhan aptly predicted would become a global village, fostering all kinds of new connections between people with interests, lifestyles, needs, identities that could not have been accommodated in a corner store. It continues to mobilize these people, giving them the gifts of like-minded communities, a platform for sharing their stories, a network of support, and in some cases, a reminder that it gets better.

While this is all fine and dandy, it’s worth nothing that these digital third places don’t completely fulfill Oldenburg’s vision. Many have argued that the lack of physical co-presence is a veiled sort of isolationism, Facebook is commonly critiqued as making the notion of friendship superficial and facilitating idealized presentations of life thatmakes people sad.

With the advent of wearables, interactive installations and other kinds of ubiquitous computing, technology is trending in a direction where digital and physical boundaries are more blurred. In the context of public spaces, the emerging question seems to become: How can the digital complement or enhance our experience of the physical third place?

I  like to have my private space and often shy away from talking to strangers. I personally spend so much time with people in New York City – at work, at school, at networking event etc – that when I have the time I either want to be around my friends or by with my cute dogs.

However, this article intrigued me to search for the third places around me. The most obvious one was central park during off leash hour. Before 9AM in the central park, dogs are allowed to be off leashed. It is like a dog heaven. I started to go at 7AM because my dogs like to run around on a grass (not a graveled dog park). Once you start to go regularly, you will see same people over and over and people make conversation casually.

The second one that I see is the Doonya bollywood dancing workout studio. I started to go because I love bollywood dancing and I used to go on and off. Recently I started to go more regularly and you start to talk to the other regulars.

The third one is church. Every sunday people gather to share the religious belief, but the social after and eating lunch together is also the part of the experience.

After thinking about the third places that I know, it seemed like most of the third places around me isn’t deliberately made. The central park had to set up a rule that interested people and Doonya and church needed to engage people so that they sustain their business or function. It seems like the key to successful third place is some how making the people regulars.

Link to the blog for the reading.

(http://itsmikeysdesignblog.tumblr.com)

There are many reasons for the increase in public vs. private space. It’s not that these places don’t exist, but the mind set of the people that use them have changed. A lot of people are more self-absorbed. Technology now plays a big role in the way in which we converse and interact. Even in public places that promote community and social interaction, people are too engaged in their own livelihood and their personal emails and messages to communicate with one another.

This can be regularly seen on the subway, where people are choosing the life style consisting mainly of a home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle. You walk down the street with your headphones on and then sit on the subway staring at your phone. There are unwritten rules on the subway or public bus. Don’t make eye contact and give people as much space as possible and if you try and talk to someone you might be seen as crazy. These spaces promote communication but we fall back on our routine of solitude.

Technology is evolving and so is our way of socializing. Using a phone or screen doesn’t mean it stops us from communication with each other, but is a new form of connecting and interaction with one another. There are certain things that may change because of this. We may see less community in our neighborhoods with fewer people knowing and talking with their neighbors. However there are places and groups online where people can form similar relationships with people of shared interest. This is a different type of “third place”, but still a place where people can virtually gather easily and pleasurably.

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.

You can find it on my blog here