1.

 Rethinking third places and

community building
Caryl Bosman and Joanne Dolley

INTRODUCTION

Ideals of community as produced by many planning discourses – in

Australia, the UK and America – in the 2000s are not dissimilar to their
historical forbears. Most remain associated with aspirations to ‘the good
life’, a more caring, sharing, connected and united world (Freie 1998).
An imagined gemeinschaft village life is still a popular image of ‘commu-
nity’: small scaled, place-based, face-to-face relationships, self-contained,
self-governing and self-referential. However, the unquestioned belief
that physical planning can create ideals of community and provide the
necessary ingredients for ‘the good life’ is no longer axiomatic. The often
simplistic interpretation of ‘community’ has meant social and cultural
difference has not always been recognised and everyday life patterns have
been largely regulated by the ‘master’ plan. We argue that the values
attributed to ideals of community have been re-invented, re-produced
and re-inscribed, over the course of the twentieth century as universal
and unquestionable ‘truths’. This chapter maps some of the planning
techniques and rationalities that underpin these ‘truths’; ‘truths’ that
ultimately affect the planning and development practices that comprise
many contemporary city landscapes and in particular in the case of this
book, third places.
This first chapter introduces the concept of third place and establishes
a critical platform for understanding the relations between place and
community. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book structure.
The chapters in this book highlight the importance of third places
and how they can be incorporated into urban design to offer places of
­interaction – promoting togetherness in an urbanised world of mobility
and rapid change; frequently cited causes for the demise of community
and the decline in social health and well-being. The book chapters analyze
a diverse array of spaces identified as third places, authored by scholars
from different disciplines and from different countries around the world.

­1

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 2 Rethinking third places

RETHINKING THIRD PLACE

In 1989 the sociologist, Professor Ray Oldenburg, released the influential

book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers,
Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get
You Through the Day, in which he described his concept of third place.
Third place is a concept which identifies places which are not home (first
place) or work (second place), but are ‘informal public gathering places’
(Oldenburg 1997 p. 6). They are neutral places which provide opportuni-
ties for people to meet and interact and to develop a sense of belonging to
place (Oldenburg 1999). Oldenburg (1989) attributes eight distinguishing
characteristics in defining or identifying third places:

1. Neutral ground or a common meeting place.

2. Levellers or places that encourage, and are inclusive of, social and
cultural diversity.
3. Places that are easy to access and accommodate various sedentary and
active activities.
4. Place champions or regular patrons.
5. Low profile and informal places.
6. Places which foster a playful atmosphere.
7. A home away from home.
8. A place where conversation is the primary activity.

Third places are as relevant at the end of the second decade of the twenty-
first century as they were 30 years ago. Urbanisation and its associated
problems and solutions, and in particular the effect on community rela-
tions, remain ‘hot topics’. Loss of community and sense of place is often
identified as a problem by social researchers. Oldenburg (1997 p. 7) wrote:
‘Life without community has produced, for many, a life style consisting
mainly of a home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle. Social well-being and
psychological health depend upon community’. One conceptual place
where community building occurs is the third place. In a time of rapid
urbanisation, with a UN projection that 75 per cent of the population will
be living in cities by 2050, there is a critical need to revisit third place as a
possible contribution to easing increasing levels of anxiety and loneliness
and thereby contributing to the health and well-being of individuals and
communities (Hollis 2013; Jacobs 1996; Firth et al. 2011; Putnam 2000).
There has been a great deal of interest in the concept of third place. A
2018 Google Scholar search on Oldenburg’s 1989 book found it cited in
2634 articles. Oldenburg published his second third place book Celebrating
The Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the ‘Great Good Places’ at the

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­3

Heart of Our Communities (2001) at the turn of the century. The book is a
collection of 19 essays which tell stories by proprietors and patrons about
successful businesses in the USA which have purposely incorporated third
place in their physical planning and urban design schemes. These include
a shopping centre, tavern, restaurant, coffeehouse, garden shop and a
bookstore. Both of Oldenburg’s books continue to inspire research across
a broad range of locations and in a variety of theoretical frameworks. For
example, authors have incorporated the third place concept into the design
of aged care facilities; many have explored new types of third places such
as libraries, parks and other non-commercial public places; and others
have investigated cyberspace and social media in terms of third places.
For example, Mele et al. (2015) found that wet markets in Singapore are a
good example of third places, facilitating casual and regular social interac-
tions between local residents across ethnicities, gender and socio-economic
status. Jones et al. (2015) discovered that fast food outlets act as effective
third places bringing together ethnically diverse customers, facilitated by
their predictability and ubiquity. There are ever new places which can be
added to the list of third places, including the camaraderie which is evident
in smoking zones in the countries with limited public spaces for smoking;
or the height of popularity of the game of Pokemon Go, where everyone
from school children to adults with child-like wonder traipsed through
churchyards, building foyers, parklands using their mobile devices search-
ing for place-based electronic creatures.
Third places are important because they act as ‘mediation between the
individual and the larger society’ and increase neighbourhood sense of
belonging and community (Oldenburg 1999 p. xxix). Numerous social
researchers suggest that everyday incidental interactions of third places
improve relationships between neighbours; decrease loneliness and isola-
tion; improve the perception of safety; build social capital and create a
sense of place (Oldenburg 1999; Thompson and Maggin 2012; Galdini
2016; Vincent et al. 2016).

PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY: HISTORICAL

LEGITIMISATIONS

This section highlights particular sites in which ideals of community were/

are employed as planning techniques, with the intention to produce spe-
cific outcomes and achieve particular economic ends – disciplined, docile
subjects and collectives. We draw attention to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden
City; Frank Lloyd Wright, Raymond Unwin and Charles Reade’s versions
of the same; New Urbanist interventions and Eco-Village ­promulgations

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 4 Rethinking third places

primarily to suggest some of the historical precedencies that many urban

planning discourses re-produced as more-or-less ‘truthful’, ‘normal’ and
‘good’. In addition, by including references to some of the ‘heroic’ patri-
archal planning histories – Howard, Wright, Unwin and Reade – it is not
our intention to re-inscribe, what Leonie Sandercock refers to as totalising
modernist narratives. Rather, following Sandercock the revisiting of
these histories is to ‘recover, to make visible, these stories that have been
rendered invisible’ (Sandercock 1998 p. 5). It is pertinent to consider the
planning context and historical ideals of community as the context for
third places. As Oldenburg explained, ‘American planners and developers
have shown a great disdain for those earlier arrangements in which there
was life beyond home and work’ (Oldenburg 1989 p. 18). This leads to
Oldenburg’s description of third places as ‘those gathering places where
community is most alive and people are most themselves’ (Oldenburg 1989
p. 40).

Garden City Emergences

One of the most enduring and influential planning treatises that sought to
construct the site of ‘community’ as civil, moral and good was Ebenezer
Howard’s Garden City model. Howard (1850‒1928) drew from a wide
range of literature and ideas of the late nineteenth century to address issues
arising from the mass migration of rural dwellers to city centres. Through
planning and design of self-contained and self-governing Garden Cities,
linked by rapid transport routes, Howard sought to provide the accessibil-
ity and sociability of the city together with the healthiness of country life.
In his book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform the Garden City
is given as being aligned with nature, offering social opportunities, ample
recreation areas that are readily and easily accessible to all residents, a
healthy inexpensive lifestyle, clean air and water, well paid employment
opportunities, sound investment potential, and the freedom of individual-
ity within the context of ‘community’ co-operation (Hall and Ward 1998).
It was thus fully inclusive. Howard’s aim, according to Jane Jacobs, ‘was
the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you
were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending
your life among others with no plans of their own’ (Jacobs 1972 p. 27).
The Garden City is given as the epitome of ‘the good life’; an ideal rather
than a lived experience. In this model all residents are disciplined, docile
and obedient subjects and there is no dirt, poverty, illness, or disease.
Notwithstanding, Howard did acknowledge the existence of individuals
who required specialised care. He notionally allowed for a lunatic asylum
sited within the greenbelt bounding the Garden City.

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­5

Howard’s Garden City ‘community’ included a range of people from

industrial capitalists to low paid labourers and the political structure of
the Garden City was based upon equality, mutual consensus, sharing and
fairness. The boundaries of the Garden City are restricted and fixed by
the feasibility of all members to participate in a mutual communicative
process, so limiting the number of people who can live within the city.
Also, membership of the collective is only ascribed to those who actively
and physically participate. Those who choose not to participate or are
unable to, are alienated or deemed to be deviant. The Garden City model,
thus delineates the included ‘us’ from the excluded ‘them’ and determines
what is ‘ours’ and what is ‘theirs’.
At the same time that Howard was experimenting with his Garden City
model, the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867‒1959) was argu-
ing for a city planning approach that reflected and embodied democracy
and the modern world. Wright’s utopian vision for ‘Broadacre City’, as
with Howard’s Garden City, emerged at a time of social dis-ease, with the
‘ills’ of capitalism and overcrowding being the primary impetus for city
planning practices of the day. Wright’s planned city, as with some of his
contemporaries – in particular the Swiss/French architect, Le Corbusier –
was largely premised on the belief that physical planning practices could
produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Thomas Osborne
and Nikolas Rose (1999 p. 747) argue that Wright’s model city – as with
Corbusier’s versions – was a governmental space: ‘in the sense that the
construction of this organic social city and the normal citizen who will
inhabit it functions as the regulative ideal of a range of programmes and
initiatives within which the normal citizen is the social citizen of what [has
been called] “healthy social communities”’.
As did Howard, Wright too sought to create an urban environment that
would facilitate healthy and happy subjects, achieved through planning
techniques that deployed ideals of community. Wright’s Broadacre City,
as the title implies, was a merging of city life and country values. Wright
sought to establish ‘community’ through the provision of extensive farm
and recreational areas, pollution free factories, local schools, a range of
houses to cater for a cross-section of the population, and an inclusive
local government structure. Wright argued for an organic architecture
that responded to local topographies, climates, and functions. Like
Howard, Wright recognised the importance of modern technology rather
than harking back to the Middle Ages for his imagery, as some of his
English contemporaries – Raymond Unwin in particular – were advocat-
ing. Wright’s model city boldly embraced modern ideology, the car and
manufactured standardised components. By the 1960s, however, these
Modernist town planning techniques and practices were being criticised

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 6 Rethinking third places

for producing a ‘low grade, uniform environment from which escape was
impossible’ (Mumford 1991 p. 553). This criticism was reiterated in the
1990s by the New Urbanists – as argued below – who blamed Modernist
planning practices for the demise of ‘community’ and all that pertains to
‘the good life’. Oldenburg (1989 p. 180) describes the effects as: ‘The plan-
ners and developers continue to add to the rows of regimented loneliness
in neighborhoods so sterile as to cry out for something as modest as a
central mail drop or a little coffee counter at which those in the area might
discover one another.’
In Britain, Modernist town planning techniques and practices were
mostly portrayed in the post World War Two re-workings of Howard’s
Garden City model, renamed ‘New Town’. The early New Towns were
government incentives with a focus on public housing and employment
opportunities, although not always within walking distance as with
Howard’s model. This new version of the Garden City sought to address
issues arising from the post war period: affordable housing for returning
war veterans, the growing use of the motor vehicle, and the fashionable
shopping mall. Oldenburg (1989 p. 282) noted the post World War Two
period as a turning point for an ‘informal public life’ as people retreated
to their homes and corner stores and cafés have ‘fallen to urban renewal’,
replaced by freeways and modern infrastructure.
Although New Town planning techniques were influenced by and
reflected contemporary (late 1940s‒1950s) trends and technologies, at
the same time they largely drew upon and re-produced Howard’s early
1900s city-in-the-country model. New Towns were sited in rural areas
and as such were promoted for their country lifestyle; a ‘more balanced
and complete community life’ (Freestone 1989 p. 227). Many New Town
planners looked to a past romanticised ideal of village life to create an
essentially urban ‘community’. In these instances ideals of community
were invoked to depict nostalgia for the ‘good old days’. The historically
imagined, gemeinschaft ideals of community that the planners were pro-
moting, however, seemed no longer applicable or possible. The changes
in lifestyles and trends in the late 1950s and 1960s suggested many people
did not have the same connection to place that traditional village life
relied upon. Increased mobility during this time, higher wage opportuni-
ties, and changes in gender roles and technology – and therefore labour
­requirements – often meant fundamental changes to many urban living
patterns. Oldenburg (1989 p. 285) noted, ‘Segregation, isolation, compart-
mentalization and sterilization seem to be the guiding principles of urban
growth and renewal.’
As with Howard and Wright’s city planning models, New Town ideals
of community were to be achieved primarily through the provision for

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­7

a range of houses to cater for a range of people. Unlike some of the

nineteenth-century social mix planning techniques – that co-located
working and middle class housing – the planning of New Towns relied on
the social and physical segregation and ranking of blue and white collar
workers. B.J. Heraud (1968 p. 35) argues that there was a supposition held
by many New Town planners that, exposure to a ‘mixed environment’
would ‘enlarge people’s horizons and so benefit society as a whole’. In
addition, Mark Peel (1992 p. 25) suggests that there was a general belief
among many planners, at the time, that New Towns ‘if planned properly,
could still produce valued social outcomes–social mix, neighbourhood
community, and village-like social relationships’. This achievement was
flawed from the outset given the differences between the spontaneous
and irregular characteristics of village layouts and the planned and
controlled New Town landscapes. As N. Dennis (1968) points out, vil-
lage life revolved around an overlapping and complex web of everyday
relationships with people who were generally known and named. New
Town planning, however, involved a group of new residents who did not
necessarily know each other or have anything in common. It could be
argued that this set of circumstances cries out for informal meeting places.
Oldenburg (1989 p. 286) discusses the challenges of ‘trying to enjoy life
amid a badly designed environment’ and suggests that ‘grass roots efforts
are the best hope for creating enjoyable urban habitats’. Several chapters
in this book discuss grass roots efforts to create a sense of community,
in particular, Chapter 7 which looks at music archives and Chapter 8 on
community gardens.
By the 1980s, the commitment of the Australian government (and the
British government) to New Town programmes was dwindling. This was
partly the result of increased migration, demographic and lifestyle shifts
and changes in modes of government. The withdrawal of the government
from direct involvement in the planning and development of new residen-
tial areas opened opportunities for private enterprise intervention.

Village Idyll

Although Howard did not fully realise his Garden City dream, his work
was the impetus for others who believed they could instigate social reform
through planning for ideals of community. Raymond Unwin (1863‒1940),
having resigned as Howard’s Garden City architect, remoulded Howard’s
model in line with his own ideology. Unwin focused more on middle class
residential commuter suburbs. He drew heavily on the Arts and Crafts
Movement of John Ruskin and William Morris and turned to the Middle
Ages for his imagery and ideals. This bias was encapsulated in his book

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 8 Rethinking third places

Town Planning in Practice first published in 1909. In effect, through

specific town planning practices Unwin sought to regulate everyday life
of the individual, in accordance with particular ideals of community, an
argument which is taken up a little later.
For Unwin, village life encapsulated ‘the good life’ and ideals of com-
munity. The village was a site of both social and aesthetic value; social in
terms of bringing together a group of like-minded people, with similar
values and interests, and aesthetic in the sense of place creation. Unwin
believed that through the use of local building materials and practices,
residents would establish an identity and a sense of belonging to place.
This common identity he argued established ‘community’, as people
shared common ties and memories. Unwin’s concept of ‘community’ is
thus closely aligned with gemeinschaft relationships. Here, ‘community’ is
consigned to being rural as opposed to urban. It is associated with belong-
ing rather than alienation, communality rather than individualism and
the traditional rather than the modern. The urban versus rural dialectic
is played out in a direct and blatant fashion. Howard sought to sift the
qualities associated with ‘the good life’ from both poles in his Garden
City model, while Unwin drew almost exclusively from the rural pole. In
Unwin’s argument for a ‘new form of community that would rise up out
of the land, clear, clean, honest and alive’ (Unwin 1994 p. xxi), place-based
relationships and imagined, ‘golden age’ values are re-inscribed.
Unwin sought to rationalise, re-organise and rank the largely incre-
mental and spontaneous planning practices that informed village life in
pre-industrial England. He stated that (Unwin 1901 p. 93):

It is the crystallisation of the elements of the village in accordance with a

definitely organised life of mutual relations, respect or service, which gives the
appearance of being an organised whole, the home of a community, to what
would otherwise be a mere conglomeration of buildings.

This attempt by Unwin, to create a ‘new form of community’ by develop-

ing low density residential ‘villages’ for like-minded people, has been
criticised for propagating suburban sprawl and reinforcing social polarisa-
tion. As we will demonstrate, many current planners and developers also
promulgated village planning techniques and practices as a means to
produce ideals of community.
Unwin’s village model emerged in the antipodes and found its way to
South Australia through Charles Reade (1880‒1933). Reade was commis-
sioned by the South Australian government to design a garden suburb as a
model example of latest planning practice. The new fully planned village,
now known as Colonel Light Gardens, contrasted with existing suburban
development which was largely haphazard and subject to opportunists

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­9

and laissez-faire practices. Australian suburban development had emerged

in opposition to the slums; the ‘dense, dirty, unnatural, disorderly and
disease ridden, vs [the] open, clean, natural and healthy’ (Davison 1993
p. 3). Reade traded heavily on this imagery in his argument for the village
model. Reade’s model was underpinned by and realised through the
implementation of planning techniques pertaining to ideals of community.
Like Howard and Unwin, Reade attempted to plan a residential setting
that would be manifest through largely utopian images of docile and
happy ‘community’ subjects. Reade’s village model represented a healthy
environment, an enclave for white nuclear families, a moral and upright
‘community’, stability, conformity and a sound financial investment
(Freestone 1989 pp. 84‒85). The Australian suburbs have historically been
socially exclusive places, home only for those who could afford to move
from the dense and overcrowded cities to embrace the country lifestyle
which suburbia promised.

Urban Villages1

Much of the recent (1990s‒2000s) planning rhetoric about the re-creation

of villages and re-establishing of ‘communities’ is essentially about a life-
style that is walkable. In these discourses a walkable lifestyle is promoted
as being one that fulfils and sustains everyday needs within the locality, so
reducing the need to use non-renewable resources. In these new villages,
the government of everyday life is through practices of social interaction,
through physical mobility (walking or cycling) and local travel. The
Modernist planning techniques regulated behaviour through motorised
travel and many Modernist planners argued that this mode of travel
liberated the individual. Liberation and ‘freedom’ are now construed in
relation to physical mobility. Through planning practices that emphasise
pedestrian propinquity, individuals are ‘liberated’ from the car and from
the negative impacts of suburban landscapes. Howard’s Garden City
model too, allegedly, offered residents ‘freedom’ to walk to places of
employment and places of recreation. This focus is reiterated in the New
Urbanists discourses: passive social contact, proximity and appropriate-
ness of space.
The New Urbanist Movement was established in the early 1990s by
a group of American architects and its proponents believe it ‘is poised
to become the dominant real estate and planning trend of . . . [this] cen-
tury’ (Steuteville 2000). The New Urbanist Movement (largely operated

1  The term ‘urban village’ was popularised by HRH The Prince of Wales in the 1980s.

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 10 Rethinking third places

through private enterprise practices) has had a significant impact on some

of the planning policies, legislation and projects set up by the American
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The
movement is described as a reworking of traditional neighbourhood
ideology for the social environment of the 1990s (Fulton 1996). Heidi
Landecker (1996) likens the movement to a new religion with prophets
(founders Peter Calthorpe, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany),
a Bible (The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community ed.
Peter Katz) and thirteen commandments given to regulate planning and
development practices. New Urbanist development practices have been
primarily taken from Unwin’s Town Planning in Practice first published in
1909 and Clarence Perry’s ‘Neighbourhood Unit’ of 1929.
New Urbanist discourses claim to address the ‘ills’ of Modernism and
the ‘evils’ of conventional suburban planning of the 1930s and 1940s.
Modernist architects, such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, are
blamed for the demise of ‘vital communities’ by privileging private over
public spaces, focusing on the motor vehicle and instigating segregation
policies (Calthorpe 1994 p. xv). The Modernists, Vincent Scully (1994)
laments, killed the traditional city and everything that pertained to
‘the good life’: ‘community’, ‘correctness’ and ‘humanness’. Many New
Urbanists consider American suburbia to be a landscape that largely
inhibits experiences of ‘the good life’ – ideals of community and gemein-
schaft relationships. Suburbia is depicted as being lonely and isolated,
without public spaces to gather informally; a place where children grow
up unbalanced, without any understanding of traditional (gemeinschaft?)
values, morals or social responsibilities (Audirac 1999). As Oldenburg
(1989 p. 282) described, ‘Adolecents spend more time in shopping malls
than they do in any place beyond home and school. The duel degree is in
consumership and passivity’. In response to the view of suburbia, many
New Urbanists argue for a return to a cherished national icon, ‘that of
a compact, close-knit community’ (Katz 1994 p. ix) achieved through
comprehensive, historically founded, more-or-less ‘truthful’ planning
techniques.
As such, the New Urbanist ideology remains within a Modernist agenda.
The Modernists too believed that by the design of physical infrastructure
particular social patterns could be created or influenced. For them it
was through the dominance of car travel and the development of tower
blocks. The New Urbanists seek to achieve the same end through a return
to traditional village life. Both argue for the creation of ‘community’
(however defined) achieved through planning and built form as the means
to cure the contemporary ‘ills’ of society. While the Modernists sought to
achieve their end through the celebration of new technology and affirming

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­11

their belief in the future, the New Urbanists look to a romanticised past
(a pre-capitalist, pre-industrial, pre-motorised era) for their realisation of
‘community’ (Audirac and Shermyen 1994).
For the New Urbanists, it is the fundamental qualities of small country
towns or villages that they wish to emulate, rather than city urbanity. Peter
Calthorpe gives the key New Urbanists planning determinates as being
‘pedestrian scale, an identifiable centre and edge, integrated diversity of
use and population and defined public space’ (Calthorpe 1994 p. 122).
These ‘post-suburban’ developments are proposed to include the urban
advantages of employment, civic, commercial and retail opportunities
coupled with the rural advantages of clean air, healthy lifestyles and
open public spaces. These qualities the New Urbanists state – as did
Howard – are essential for ‘restoring functional, sustainable communities’
(Steuteville 2000).
In keeping with Howard’s Garden City model and the subsequent
derivatives, the New Urbanists’ claim for ‘community’ also includes a
variety of house types and styles for a range of life stages and incomes.
The New Urbanist Charter (Congress for the New Urbanism 1998) states
‘Within neighborhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels
can bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interac-
tion, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic
community.’ The difference between the earlier city/town/village planning
models and the New Urbanists models rest in private enterprise interests.
Ideals of community become a commodity only for those who can afford
them.
The rationalities of government underpinning these new ‘fully planned
communities’ are no longer fuelled by aspirations of social reform for
the poor. Rather, they are influenced by market forces, where ideals of
community are commercialised and sold as a commodity for profit. Any
remnant of social reform embedded in these rationalities applies only
to those who can afford it. Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
suggest that middle-class home owners reduce the number of cars per
family, in order to set back the higher costs of living in a New Urbanist
development. They state ‘No other action of the designer can achieve an
improvement in the availability of housing for the middle class compara-
ble to the sensible organization of a good neighborhood plan’ (Duany and
Plater-Zyberk 1994 p. xix).
In arguing for a new (or not so new) pattern of urban development
the New Urbanists assume that the majority of Americans are inherently
unhappy and dissatisfied with suburban life: a large allotment, detached
house, back yard, privacy and car reliance. Some research suggests
however, that suburbia fosters positive relationship networks because

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 12 Rethinking third places

residents tend to be of similar life stages; for example, young families,

families with teenagers or retirees.
The use of ideals of community as planning techniques – be they
espoused by New Urbanists or others – has ethical implications in that
planners become implicated in regulating and moulding behaviour pat-
terns to certain ends: collective cohesion, interaction, sharing, supportive
networks, membership and personal investment. Ideals of community
utilised as planning techniques also assumes that individuals have a pre-
disposition for neighbourly interaction, irrespective of personal histories,
incomes and beliefs. In addition, they assume that residents will be happy
to reduce or moderate their use of the car in an environment that is not
always conducive to the economic journey. Oldenburg (1989 p. 286) refers
to informal public life of the past as the ‘triumph of the space user over the
space planner – we simply took over establishments and spaces created for
other purposes. What is revolutionary about our new environment is its
unprecedented resistance to user modification.’

‘Sustainable’ Villages

More recently a new village product has entered the housing market. This
fully planned product, or Eco Village, is designed in accordance with
accepted sustainability principles; most commonly: recycling, solar power
and rain water retention infrastructures. Many Eco Village discourses
re-inscribe New Urbanist planning techniques in a bid to create ideals of
community. Hugh Barton (2000 p. 11) defines an Eco-Village as ‘an attrac-
tive, convivial and healthy place that balances privacy with community
and local provision with city access’. As do the New Urbanists, Eco-
Village discourses also argue for ideals of community as produced through
an assemblage of urban and rural lifestyle rhetorics. Similar to Unwin
and Wright’s theorisations, identity with place is to be achieved through
practices of planning and architecture, which are to respond to the local
climate, topography and landscape. The model for these contemporary
villages suggests they are located in country areas and include a range of
employment opportunities to cater for all skill levels. Eco-Village propo-
nents also argue for residential diversity – a range of house sizes and styles
and diversity of people, from across the full spectrum of the p ­ opulation
– as a planning technique essential for the production of ‘sustainable
communities’. It is through the practices of planning and architecture
that, Alison Gilchrist (2000 p. 150) suggests, ideals of community become
‘inextricably linked to sustainability’.
Eco-Villages are also resource inclusive developments with a focus
on pedestrian propinquity; in that schools, retail, commercial and civic

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­13

amenities are provided for, in conjunction with residential accommoda-

tion. Like the New Urbanists, the assumption underpinning Eco-Village
planning techniques is that the provision of local amenities and an empha-
sis on pedestrian propinquity will produce friendly verbal interaction and
local networks will be established. Importantly, this ‘sustainable’ village
model is based upon efficient networks of activities and travel within and
between villages, so eliminating the need for a privately owned motor
vehicle, and traditional village values apply: gemeinschaft relationships
and ‘the good life’.
Eco-Villages, as with previous schemes, have been criticised for ignoring
the existing pattern of contemporary life. Taylor (2000 p. 28) suggests that
a ‘new’ model of development is not what is required to achieve the desired
and much debated ecologically sustainable – and we would add ‘com-
munity’ formation – goals. Rather, planners, architects and other urban
theorists need to work within the given fabric of modern urban life if any
significant change is to be realised. Goals need to be realistic rather than
based on utopian ideals of social mix and ideals of community. Peter Hall
and Colin Ward (1998 p. 121) suggest this involves, among other things,
equally top-down State regulations and bottom-up local approaches.
In our positioning of third place, this book acknowledges both these
governmental modes of producing place and community networks. This
historical background provides the rationale for the variety of planning
and design contexts within which third places exist (or don’t exist) and in
which grass roots actions of the residents can create third places.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The book explores the virtual and geographical understanding of place

and community through the lens of third places. The first six chapters
focus on theoretical and broad concepts of third place for example:
rethinking third place and community (this chapter); feminist perspectives;
life stage perspectives: older age and child friendly; and urban design and
safety considerations: green planning and eyes on the street. The final five
chapters focus on specific examples of third places: community museums;
community gardens; cyber space; public transport and sidewalks.
In Chapter 2, ‘Feminist Perspectives on Third Places’ Simone Fullagar,
Wendy O’Brien and Kathy Lloyd apply a feminist perspective to third
place, concluding that women require third places that are both physi-
cally and socially transparent, that is, safe spaces. This chapter questions
normative urban design assumptions often associated with white middle
class male views. The feminist perspective was not included in Oldenburg’s

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 14 Rethinking third places

early work largely because the prevailing assumption of the time was that
feminine space related to the home (first place). Fullagar et al. identify
how third places facilitate or constrain women’s right to the city. The
focus on feminism in this chapter also highlights links between third
place and transgender and non-binary identities. It also points to ways of
thinking about gendered experiences relating to class, sexuality, culture,
age and ability. Building upon Oldenburg’s conception of third places as
places where people interact, the authors discuss third places as more than
human, places where people also interact with plants, animals and urban
infrastructure. The chapter concludes with an acknowledgement that
third places are essentially good and they call for more work to be done to
create places that are inclusive for everyone and which allow all people to
exercise their right to the place.
Chapter 3 builds on concerns of gender and third places to focus on the
latter stages of a life. Sara Alidoust and Caryl Bosman analyse third places
in terms of the contributions they can make to promoting social health
for many people over the age of 65. Ageing populations are world-wide
phenomena and there is general acknowledgement that urban design
and planning principles, including the provision of third places, need to
recognise and support active and healthy ageing agendas. Accessibility
of amenities is critical in achieving these agendas. The chapter concludes
by arguing for the planning of transport and third place interventions in
sprawling suburban landscapes, to allow older people more opportunities
to be socially connected.
The other end of the lifecycle continuum is taken up in Chapter 4 by
Geoff Woolcock in his chapter on child-friendly third places. Geoff inves-
tigates third places in relation to how child friendly they are, using South
Bank Parklands in Brisbane, Australia as a case study. He unpacks the
significance of built and natural third places in the health and well-being
of children and young people. Woolcock paints a disturbing picture of
childhood obesity, inactivity and social disconnectedness and argues for
the importance of well designed third places that, ‘not only welcome chil-
dren but also establish social and psychological connections that stimulate
learning and ultimately, active civic participation’. The chapter provides
the traits of effective child-friendly third places including opportunities for
unstructured, challenging, adventurous (but safe) play.
Elizelle Juaneé Cilliers’ chapter, Chapter 5, seeks to demonstrate the
value and role of planning in creating and recreating public spaces which
are third places; neutral places which provide opportunities for people to
meet and interact and to develop a sense of being a part of a place. To do
this she identifies a number of design elements to support the provision
and reclaiming of third places in contemporary urban contexts. Through

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­15

different approaches to planning (place-making, green planning and lively

planning) she establishes an evidence-based framework using five inter-
national, best-practice case studies to develop third places. The chapter
concludes with a global challenge ‘to change life, we must first change
spaces into third places’.
In keeping with the urban planning/design theme, in Chapter 6 Gordon
Holden draws on Jane Jacobs’ ‘Eyes on the Street’ to examine the role
of third place in improving perceived safety. Holden focuses on the
multidimensional and interconnected aspects of perceived and actual
safety within the context of third places in neighbourhoods. He discusses
the complexities surrounding the concept of neighbourhoods and the
positive arguments for ‘eyes on the street’ in urban environments as means
to create perceived and actual zones of safety. Holden proposes that
third places contribute to ‘eyes on the street’ and therefore safety because
these places act as nodes, attracting public participation and interaction.
Through the use of four case studies on the Gold Coast, Australia he
explores the presence or absence of third places within the context of
recorded crime in those places. He concludes that third places may well
contribute significantly to both the perception of and actual safety of a
place and lower crime rates.
The remaining chapters in the book look at particular sites as third
places. The concept of third place also includes places that foster hobbies
and collective networks as in the theme of Chapter 7: ‘Understanding
Popular Music Heritage Practice Through the Lens of “Third Place”’.
Lauren Istvandity, Sarah Baker, Jez Collins, Simone Driessen, and
Catherine Strong draw from different case studies ranging from do-it-
yourself archiving, digital archives, walking tours, and pop music reunion
tours to build a convincing augment for the value and currency of alterna-
tive third places in urban areas. Baker, in particular, points to the value
of community archives and museums as third places which foster social
health and can prevent an increase in social isolation among older single
adults. In the same chapter Collins posits third places in the virtual online
space. This new variety of third place, she argues, allows ‘individuals [to]
come together online, forming communities dedicated to creating, popu-
lating, sustaining and celebrating alternative popular music histories’. The
final section of this chapter focuses on tours as third places. Strong’s thesis
is built around ‘how the physical space of urban environments plays a role
in how popular music is remembered’. She argues that walking tours are
inherently third places. Driessen considers how ‘the reunion concert tour
of heritage music acts as a site where aspects of third place are enacted’.
In this understanding of third place, the reunion concert venue becomes a
temporary third place.

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 16 Rethinking third places

Chapter 8, by Joanne Dolley is entitled ‘Third Places and Social Capital:

Case Study Community Gardens’. This chapter explores the literature on
community gardens and the author’s recent research which investigated
community gardens against third place characteristics in a range of loca-
tions in Australia and Denmark. All of the case study community gardens
exhibited most or all of the eight third place characteristics and some were
particularly effective third places. The theoretical framework used for
this research project is social capital and more specifically, Granovetter’s
‘weak ties’. The chapter gives examples of ways in which community gar-
dens can act as third places. The findings provide insights for better design
of third places and the design of community gardens, where building social
capital and sense of community is a goal.
Dmitri Williams and Do Own Kim’s chapter, ‘Third Places in the Ether
Around Us: Layers on the Real World’, focuses on the third places which
exist beyond the ‘physical realm’ to non-physical spaces made possible
through technology. They approach the topic through theories utilised in
the study of computer-mediated communication, in particular the concept
of ‘layering’ of multiple online and offline environments. Williams and
Kim outline the strengths and weaknesses of virtual places over real-world
places. They identify aspects of virtual space which enhance third place
interactions by cutting through barriers of socio-economic status and
physical attributes. However, the authors caution on the use of filter
bubbles, which feed us interactions with like-minded people, isolating
our social connections somewhat like a gated community – possibly
Oldenburg’s ‘worst nightmare’. Williams and Kim also draw attention to
new technology blurring the edges between first, second and third places,
for example, as social media interrupts work, work emails edge into
home life, and third place virtual games take place at home. The chapter
concludes that as we move into an ‘ever-more technologically mediated
future’, technology has potential to provide third places to anyone
anywhere, but just as physical architecture influences human behaviour,
it is important to consider the design of the social ‘architecture’ of online
spaces.
Chapter 10 focuses on public transport as a third place. Daniel O’Hare
‘considers whether the public transport commute, historically a linear
experience between the workplace and home, can be a third place rather
than a soulless shuttle to be bracketed with “work” as the opposite to
“home”’. O’Hare examines the changing nature and form of work and he
links this to the design of cities and the experience of commuters’ journeys.
He posits that many young adults today (2018) are choosing not to drive
and consequently the use of public transport, active modes of travel and
third places are flourishing. Public transport is continually shaping and

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 Rethinking third places and community building ­17

reshaping the level of passenger interaction, with in-vehicle design and

waiting areas (station/stop) designs either facilitating or limiting certain
types of interactions. The use of mobile technology means many public
transport users can connect to virtual communities and so transform the
travel journey into a third place. The chapter ends with a call for a greater
recognition of public transport as a third place to be ‘enjoyed rather than
endured’ and that well-designed and managed public transport contrib-
utes to people-centred cities.
The final chapter, Chapter 11, by Leila Mahmoudi Farahani and David
Beynon, focuses on streets as sites of third place activity. By analysing the
unobtrusive video footage of interactions which occur along several com-
mercial streets in the City of Greater Geelong, Victoria, it was determined
that sidewalk cafés and restaurants, shops and interaction zones such
street crossings act, in varying degrees, as third places. Their methodol-
ogy of video analysis of the use of space and their depiction of findings
through diagrams provides a unique level of detail of third place interac-
tions. Using their data and referring theoretically to Lefebvre’s ideas on
meanings in space, they are able to comment on what makes a vital, active
streetscape and propose design features which can enhance the design of
third places.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Third places are neutral, open places which act as levellers to bring together
local residents of different ethnicities, ages, genders, socio-economic
status, education levels and interests. Third places are sites of diversity
where everyone is welcome, free to come and go and feel comfortable.
Third places can play an important role in improving social interactions in
neighbourhoods. Ray Oldenburg, the creator of the concept, listed many
examples of third places, such as parks, cafés and piazzas, where people
could meet informally. This chapter provides the historical and current
urban planning context in which third places reside. This book is a timely
exploration of the role of third place in building relations of community in
a modern highly urbanised mobile society.

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