Alone, Suburban & Sorted: Part 7, The Third Place

In this post we begin to discuss sociologist Ray Oldenburg's book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

Oldenburg begins The Great Good Place with a few quotes. I'd like to share two of them to start us off:

But aside from friends, there must also be a Place. I suppose that this is the Great Good Place that every man carries in his heart...
--Pete Hamill

A community life exists when one can go daily to a given location at a given time and see many of the people one knows.
--Philip Slater

Oldenburg begins his book by discussing the Problem of Place in America today. The Problem of Place is the result of rapid changes that have occurred in American living arrangements after World War II. Specifically, after WWII America witnessed the rise of the automotive suburb. War veterans, seeking a peaceful existence, began to seek out quiet enclaves, a patch of grass and a cul de sac. Although there is nothing wrong with quiet neighborhoods, many things were sacrificed in how Americans built their suburbs. Specifically, the following places began to vanish from American lives:

Pedestrian-heavy sidewalks on Main Street
Main Street hangouts (barbershops, soda fountains, diners)
The front porch (the back porch with a fenced in backyard predominates in suburbs)
Corner stores
Corner taverns and pubs
Local parks

According to Oldenburg, the loss of these places have dramatically affected American community. Without places to mix, converse, and connect American social life has grown thin. And it's mainly a problem of place. We've lost the locations where social connections are made and maintained. Why did Americans trade in vibrant communities for quiet suburbs? Oldenburg gives Dolores Hayden's answer: Americans have "substituted the vision of the ideal home for that of the ideal city."

With the loss of these places Americans have been reduced to commuting between two locations: Home and work. A person leaves home in the morning and heads to work. After work we drive back home. Thus, Americans are largely reduced to living in two places. But for a fuller social existence Oldenburg argues that we need a "third place" in our lives. Oldenburg notes that all vibrant communities have third places, places other than home or work, where community and fellowship can be found. In America it was the shops, parks, soda fountains, diners, barbershops and taverns along Main Street. In England it is the local pub. In France it is the coffeehouse. In Germany, the beer garden. Europe has largely kept its third places while Americans have gradually lost theirs. Thus, many Europeans struggle with living in American suburbs. One can't take a quick walk around the corner to grab a pint and chat up the gang about news and events. Of course, one can drive somewhere to get a pint but it's hard to build up a regular clientele if people have to drive miles to get to the establishment. Thus, many Americans might go to pubs or coffee shops but they tend to do so sporadically and often alone. As a consequence, very little social mixing occurs.

Oldenburg summarizes:

"A two-stop model of daily routine is becoming fixed in our habits as the urban environment affords less opportunity for public relaxation. Our familiar gathering centers are disappearing rapidly...The new kinds of places emphasize fast service, not slow and easy relaxation.

In the absence of an informal public life, people's expectations toward work and family life have escalated beyond the capacity of those institutions to meet them. Domestic and work relationships are pressed to supply all that is wanting and much that is missing in the constricted life-styles of those without community." (p. 9)

"The problem of place in America manifests itself in a sorely deficient informal public life. The structure of shared experience beyond what is offered by family, job, and passive consumerism is small and dwindling. The essential group experience is being replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals. American life-styles, for all their material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation, and a high price tag. America can point to many areas where she has made progress, but in the area of informal public life she has lost ground and continues to lose it." (p. 13)

"The examples set by societies that have solved the problem of place and those set by the small towns and vital neighborhoods of our past suggest that daily life, in order to be relaxed and fulfilling, must find its balance in three realms of experience. One is domestic, a second is gainful and productive, and the third is inclusively sociable, offering both the basis of community and the celebration of it. Each of these realms of experience is built on associations and relationships appropriate to it; each has its own physically separate and distinct places; each must have its measure of autonomy from the others...In the the United States, the middle classes particularly are attempting a balancing act on a bipod consisting of home and work. That alienation, boredom, and stress are endemic among us is not surprising. For most of us, a third of life is either deficient or absent altogether, and the other two-thirds cannot be successfully integrated into a whole." (p. 14, 15)

"For want of a suitable existing term, we introduce our own: the third place will hereafter be used to signify what we have called 'the core settings of informal public life.' The third place is a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work...[The term] underscores the significance of the tripod and the relative importance of its three legs." (p. 16)

I want to dwell on third places as these observations converge upon the trends noted in the earlier posts. That is, Americans are socially disengaged, sorted into communities of like-mindedness, and have largely lost their third places. But I also wanted to end this series with the third place as I think the third place might allow us to reverse or mitigate some of the trends we have been discussing. If third places can be cultivated, if the Problem of Place is addressed, much of what we have been discussing (disengagement, sorted communities) might be overcome (locally and to some small degree). If so, then it is worth the effort to explore the characteristics of third places in a little more detail.

Final Post: Where Everybody Knows Your Name