On the Death and Rebirth of Third Places
- Charlotte Gregory
- Apr 10, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 6
As is typical of the constant content cycle of the 2020s, recently my social media feeds became filled with discussions on the ideas of "Third Place" and "Third Space". This first began as a screencap of a Twitter thread, then video essays on YouTube, and SubStack articles on the loss of third places and the loneliness epidemic of today. Therefore, I decided to undertake a deep dive of these phenomena...
What is a Third Place?
Oftentimes third places and third spaces are confused, and used interchangeably, however occupy different meanings. We can attribute the concept of the Third Space to post-colonial critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha, who describes it as a metaphorical space of negotiation.
Paraphrasing Bhabha, the three forms of Space can be summarised thus:
First Space - direct spatial experience, physical spaces, such that can be measured
Second Space - spatial representation and the abstract
Third Space - the liminal inbetween, where ideas and people blend together.
The Third Place comes from a similar root concept, but focuses more on the physical space and activity rather than on the abstract. Originally coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place (1989) each Place is defined as such:
First Place - the home, someone's refuge, nest, and point of closest connection with others
Second Place - the workplace, where people spend most of their time
Third Place - congregational neutral ground, a mix between First and Second places that is both and neither.
Traditionally, the Third Place would be a community hub such as the church, or the local pub, as well as leisure spaces such as the library, sports grounds and social clubs. One might also consider shopping centres, cafes,
Hostility in Third Places:
A tweet by Salem @aWildSalem on Twitter - (who uses third space as the term rather than third place, but means the latter)
"People really built a society with no third spaces, made it illegal or unsafe to be outside, and then blamed phone use for making teenagers depressed. I've had this conversation with multiple parents. They want the phones to be the source of the problem because they don't want to admit that we have created a physical environment that is hostile to teenage existence."
It seems clear to me that this does not solely impact today's teenagers, but the entirety of society. Third spaces these days are typically either commercial or digital, both of which sets limitations on users and connections. A coffee shop could be considered a third space, however you still need to purchase something, e.g. a coffee, in order to justify using the space. Public parks are often home to hostile architecture discouraging lingering and loitering - decorative sculptural benches that become uncomfortable after a short period, or no seating at all, have become increasingly common in public spaces to discourage rough sleepers, which not only makes the space intentionally hostile to homeless people, but also to disabled people and to the elderly, who need spaces to sit. Therefore these public spaces become less appealing and more threatening for a significant number of citizens and these spaces limit opportunity for connection as we are pushed away from them.
On the flipside, in recent times there has been a growing an argument that social media is the new Third Place to combat the loss and degradation of physical Third Places. Arguably this can only apply to forums such as Discord, where curating an online community, rather than pushing products and services, is seen as the goal. Discord started as a server platform for gamers, with voice, video, and chat functions, creating a digital communal space like a club would but without the physical and spatial presence of said clubhouse - bringing people together from all across the world over shared interests who may otherwise have never met. Friendships and relationships blossom in the digital realm in ways that were not possible before the internet and instant communication. During the Covid-19 pandemic, digital third places became for many people the only communal space they could occupy without risk, as public spaces required social distancing and limits on numbers, and there was the ever-present risk of coronavirus. Forums and servers continue to provide safe spaces for communities who might otherwise be treated with hostility in the physical world.
The issue with this is that by not having visibility in the physical world, these communities can be pushed further away from it and further into online-only interactions.
Public Space and Performance
How much does your performance affect your perception of the space around you?
The Second Place is centred entirely around the idea of Performance - the workplace is where you are your most productive: creating, manufacturing, providing in order to earn a living and sustain yourself, in the hopes of more freedom as you work up the chain of command. This constant productivity also demands constant performance - in the service sectors, one must be polite, approachable, knowledgeable, well-dressed. For women this can mean a face of makeup and a structured bra, for example.
We return home to our First Place - makeup is wiped off, bra cast aside and discarded on the back of a chair, to be rediscovered tomorrow in a wild rush. We unmask into comfort after providing a Performance from approximately 8am to 5pm, depending on what "work" looks like. Longer, if we have to work overtime or face a lengthy commute.
Therefore, the Third Place is an inbetween of the two - we are naturally expected to behave well as this is a public realm, but how we present ourselves should be to our own comfort levels.
What intrigues me about these topics is not only the death of the Third Place, but the blurring between First and Second Places. Growing up, the idea of somebody working from home was a rare one - my father, a notable exception who worked from home before it was cool, still has his home office in the tiny box room I had once called mine as a toddler (the room still has the same blue carpet and the same farm animals dancing around on the wallpaper). He has worked from home for around 25 years now, and for most of that time, he was the only person I knew of who used home as a workspace. This all changed with Covid-19 and the pandemic - universities rushed to put their students into online learning, workplaces shuttered and sent employees home with laptops to eke out existence on the kitchen counter, surrounded by everyone else at home trying to do the same thing. Pure chaos, perhaps?
However, four years on hybrid working is a highly sought-after job attribute, and people appreciate the flexibility it gives them to avoid as much commuting and to spend much-needed time with loved ones. However, this has come at the expense of home privacy - where does "work" end and "home" begin if you are operating in the same series of rooms day-in, day-out? Does working from home make it harder to switch off from work-mode, and vice-versa? Working from home removes a significant chunk of the performance that office work requires - by this I mean dressing well, platitudes about how peoples' weekends were, listening to the standard radio station rather than playing your own music - although this can look different for everyone - however it also removes some of the connectivity that we need as adults which is harder to come by than when we were at school. In school, you made friends by proximity. In adulthood, that method of friendship seems far more rare. Some people may find their "work bestie" and it blossoms into true friendship, others see work colleagues as people they share a building with and that's the extent of it. Add to this hybrid working, and we see colleagues less frequently and have less chance to make meaningful connections with them. Gone are the conversations clustered around the water-cooler... and sometimes working from home means the only conversation someone might have is a five minute Teams call pushing for a project, where the receiver ends the call and thinks "That could have been an e-mail."
This all feeds back into the growing loneliness epidemic - loneliness was declared a "global public health concern" in the tail end of 2023. Covid-19 has accellerated what was already a burgeoning issue before the pandemic as we were de-socialised over a series of lockdowns.
Much of what I am exploring in this thinkpiece feeds back into each other in a loop - pushing people away from physical Third Places causes hostile environments which pushes people further away, for example. Children not having space to play can lead to lonely, isolated young adults who don't know how to connect in the real world.
On the other hand - I have hope that despite the odds communities persevere and grow, creating new Third Places for people to congregate. I am lucky enough to live in a town with a thriving craft scene, multiple book clubs, and a clear community spirit that has been evident for decades and that the town itself is very proud of. Believe me, it makes a massive difference.
FURTHER READING / VIEWING: - https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community/a10494-third-spaces-in-architecture-edward-soja/
Chapter 4, Section 4.4 and Chapter 5 in Foucault for Architects, Gordana Fontana-Giusti, 2013
Mina Le - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqjpuUJQFcM - "third places, stanley cup mania, and the epidemic of loneliness"
NotJustBikes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvdQ381K5xg - "The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place)"
Elliot Sang - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ku9csXhvJY - "Nowhere to Go: The Loss of Third Places"
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