Thinkin' about so-called third places

I’m in a small rural town in the south Puget Sound area of the Pacific Northwest in the good old USofA. I’ve only been here two years, having previously lived in OR, WI, and AZ. Back in OR there was a neat old western saloon building called “The Clubhouse” that housed a whole bunch of neat stuff. There was an arcade and a snack bar. A restaurant and barber shop on the top floor. Lots of big rooms that could be booked for events and stuff. It was free to hang out and socialize in and then food and drink etc cost money.

Since then, I have not experienced anything similarly and it makes me sad. Everything outside my house is monetized except the public library and who knows how long that will last.

I wish we could have a “community rec center” or something like that. It’s far too easy to remain disconnected from the communities in which we live and that’s super sad.

This has been a real problem around me, and it was getting worse before the pandemic. I have barely tried since, but as we are getting back to in-person events it will keep taunting me. I'm in the Boston MA USA area.

We have some spaces, like library rooms. But they often have constraints. One was that you had to be a tax-ID non-profit. It turns out we are for one of the groups I organize, but not all of them. So many of the more informal types are out of luck.

If you did qualify for the library room and get approved, you can't have food. Or you can--but you have to use the library catering. This was like $200 for a dozen brownies.

And also: if you do make the cut, you cannot use it for regular meetings. So people can't get used to going to the library on the third Thursday...or whatever.

There was a time when you could get a restaurant room, if you would spend some amount of money. But my groups have been full of people who don't spend like that, or don't drink like a sportsball crowd. So they start saying that you can't take up that space anymore. And I get that--running a restaurant is hard and margins are thin. I don't blame them. But we also don't want to force people to buy an $8 beer.

There are some "community rooms" around. It's very hard to figure out who has them, how to use them, and schedule them. And someone has to show up with the key. This failed for our neighborhood group several times.

I don't know how to solve this in a place where real estate is high and there just aren't rooms sitting around. I also think liability and cleaning weigh on this.

I don't know how to solve this.

I wouldn't mind a second place...

I moved to the city for Uni almost 5 years ago, but I was born and raised on a very small island.

Back home, there weren't many "third places", but they were well frequented: coffee shops/cafes, or the gas station and accompanying coffee shop.

Now, I don't know... I live in a gated condo. We do have shared spaces that often have people, more during certain times of year though.

In the city, there's some very nice parks full of people, mostly older folk. Relatively close to where I live, about a 30 minute walk, there's a really nice park by the beach. There's some businesses there (restaurants and bars), as well as a football field and a basketball hoop (just the 1). THAT place is full of people all year round. It's VERY nice, I go there on my walks.

I know that recently some parks were renovated nearby... And there's been some attempts to invest in better public infrastructure of that sort. I'm not sure if that's a sign that those places were/are on the decline, or if it's more like "the more the better".

I can tell you, however, that it was a bit of a shock to move from a very rural place to the city. People interact differently with each other... They're more distant. Still, I think there's plenty of spots for all kinds of people all around me, and tons of people hanging about said places.

I live in Porto, Portugal. I've heard it's very different in the US though.

Here, in terms of free spaces, it's the city parks. I see churches having service there, dads playing soccer (football) in leagues, I sometimes make the Pokemon go raid hour and there is always a friendly group for that. You can rent the shelters or the building (shelters always, building only when the city isn't using it) and it's possible to get ok for parties with alcohol because it's the city not the county. Mostly nobody does unless it's a wedding or big corporate thing. There's a dog park.

At the small county run park in my neighborhood (2k from home vs. about 6k for the big park) there is a community garden and a big complex of baseball fields and a playground and a very well utilized basketball court.

So both are technically within walking distance but big park barely - there are, shockingly given the state of transit where I live - 3 different buses that go from near my house to the big park, so even with the ridiculously reduced service it would be possible but at $4.50 for day pass I generally drive or walk, depending on whether I'm looking for a workout or just going to that raid hour.

I'm really interested in this. I think every area has some unique challenges (recent problematic earthquake here) and opportunities (tight nit community). What I see in many places boils down to money. What few places we do have in my little town are in poor shape, one more shake or blow away from shuttering. In many places in my country, funding can be had for building things. Grants. But nothing for operating. Budgets are too thin, communities are made up of people that cannot help with funding.

I would rather avoid taking a dump on capitalism, but third places are services, fundamentally, and as long as any of them are viewed as revenue generators, they cannot win. We all lose. Just as a local school does not have to raise its own money directly, we probably need external finding for communal places. Non-profit coffee shops? Maybe. My thoughts. I ate at a diner, nightly, for years. Got job referrals from other regulars. Met a combat barber 😳

We have to fight the rot from within, I think.

I've been thinking about turning the parking lot of an out of business big box store into a temporary third place on the weekends. Some sidewalk chalk and small canopies to make a place people want to hang out at.

It's more c/tacticalurbanism related, but it would be better than what my area currently has

I love this idea! I'm part of a sports group in our city (in the US) with people in their 20s all the way up to their late 50s. We suck at the actual sport but are pros at shooting the shit.

Great video from Not Just Bikes on third places.

Main issue is how we are/have been building towns/communities. More often than not, you'll see new builds on land solely for single family homes or only residential apartments instead of mixed used (commercial first floor, residential/office second+ floors) buildings. These all feed onto higher speed roads/highways where you have to drive to shop/eat/work/etc. Many older/pre-suburb towns may still have good third places, we just don't build towns like that anymore.

I'm in the US and I can't think of any real third places in my current community. I used to have them when I lived in Kansas City years ago, in the Westport area and around the university (UMKC), but that was sort of unusual in the wider metro area.

Sometimes I wonder if US law, especially tort law, has contributed to the decline in third places. As in, if you are going to have a lot of people in a space, you must have insurance because there's a lot of exposure to normal risks. Like the cost to just be a human in a place is too high -- unless those people are paying you.

It's just a thought and I don't have an essay full of citations. It may be a minor factor in what is mostly a car-dependency symptom. What do you think?

I think the city life with everyone being in a rush and overwhelmed with work has decreased the amount of third places a lot.

I still see some local caffés where people chill and the barista also sits with them at times and joins in the conversation, or people talking while they're getting a haircut etc. but it's mostly a bit older people, young people seem to keep to themselves more.

Then again, I'm quite introverted so it's hard for me to engage in conversation to the point where I might not even notice that some place is a "third place"

Greek living in Athens! I learned about third spaces when I was a broke university student that needed to escape home.

Does your area of the world still have a number of these?

To be honest, there aren't many options around here with zero costs. There are a couple of public libraries one can visit, but they are packed, especially during finals.

However, Greece has a ton of coffee shops, and you can hang in them for hours for the cost of a single coffee (3-5 euros).

or are they in the decline?

Coffee shops are thriving! Tourism is an issue, with more and more places targeting tourists instead of locals.

Do you know if your in-person communities are trying to establish or renovate theirs to help people connect or reconnect with one another?

I don't know.

For me the greatest issue is transportation, the nearest place is 20 mins on foot, other means of transit somehow require more time. On a good day, that's okay, but if I am feeling a bit depressed it's far enough to be a deterrent.

My home state is pretty well known for having some thriving third places historically, but they are shrinking now. The city I currently live in lacks such places.