What is a Third Place and How to Create One

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Read time: 6 minutes

Today at a glance:

• Topic: What’s a third place and why is it important for connection?

• Tactic: Spotting and creating third places

• Today's Finds: 📰, 📰, 🎞

• Commitments: 🤝

POV: You wake up in the morning and roll out of your warm bed into the cold air-conditioned air. You drag your feet to your Nespresso machine, make your go-to Oat Milk latte (with Califa Barista Blend), and then sip it slowly while you get ready for work. You make small talk with your doorman before getting on the subway, heading to your office, and sitting down at your desk. You put your head down, get some work done, and next thing you know it’s 6pm and time to head back home. You lay your head on the pillow and it’s time to do it all over again. 

If home is your first place and work is your second place, what is your third place? 

Both your first and second places are defined by expectations, both good and bad. You need to show up a certain way, at a certain time, and contribute a particular thing. 

Third places are where you gain your sense of community. The only purpose of third places is to socially gather, interact, and relax with no particular agenda. It's where you can go as little or as often as you'd like, expect to see familiar facies, and make new acquaintances.

Different people and generations would give you different answers for what their third places were. 

My grandparents would say their third place is a place of worship (church, Synagogue, etc.). In Italy, a third place is your local café where you spend your evenings with friends. In Barcelona, it's the local park where you watch your children play after school. 

It’s Central Perk, it’s MacLaren’s Pub, it’s the bar in New Girl (did they ever tell us the name?), it’s Monk’s Cafe. 

Your third place can be a community center, town square, public park, the gym, the barbershop, the bar, etc.

What's beautiful about these places is anyone (extroverts, introverts, ambiverts) can come as they are and get their social fill. These places check off all the major boxes needed for making or keeping friends:

✔ Proximity

✔ Repeated interactions

✔ Settings that encourage authenticity

These places promote serendipity, reduce loneliness, and foster real community.

It’s no surprise that as third places have become more rare, loneliness has soared.

But why are third places disappearing?

Why Are Third Places Disappearing?

I'm at a unique age where I've seen firsthand how and why third places are disappearing. If you asked me and my friends growing up on Long Island, our third place was Bagel Biz, our local bagel shop (and still #1 on my list of any bagel). Being bagel-obsessed, we made frequent trips to "the Biz" before school, after morning soccer, and on the weekends.

Every time we walked in, we'd see a similar group of 10+ people in their late-60s huddled at their usual four tables in the back. They'd be shooting the $hit, poking fun at one another, or just reading the newspaper.

My friends and I would be off in the distance scarfing down our second BaconEggandCheese with SaltPepperKetchup, naively saying how that would be us one day. Coming and going as we please, but always expecting to see a few familiar faces to spend time with at the Biz on any given morning.

But a lot has changed since then. Bagel Biz now lets you text your order in for a quick pick up. If that's too much, you can just DoorDash it to your front door. Plus, you don't have much to update your friends on after they saw your Instagram story at the Rangers playoff game last night. You've also been interacting daily with those people by way of DMing TikToks back and forth.

That's enough socializing, right? Well…

These are infrequent, focused interactions that are all very surface level. What happened to giving your take, hearing opinions, learning about their small wins, or even just switching off from the day to relax and unwind alongside friendly people? This new tech-enabled way doesn't allow much space for serendipity or authenticity.

Without those two things, people aren’t getting to know you, they are getting to know the sliver of yourself you decide to put out on social media.

Learn to Spot Third Places

Ray Oldenburg, urban sociologist and author of The Great Good Place, defined the characteristics that make up a third place as:

• Neutral ground - Occupants have no obligation to be there. They just want to be there.

• A leveling place - Your status does not matter there. All walks of life are welcome.

• Conversation as the focus - Playful conversation is the main focus activity, but it's not required to be the only activity.

• Accessible and accommodating - These places are conveniently located, don't require reservations, and meet the needs of the occupants (inexpressive food or drink, some sort of optional activity).

• The regulars - people who frequent the third place often and help set the tone. They allow newcomers to feel welcome and accommodated.

• Low profile - They are wholesome, cozy and accepting of all types of people. They are never snobby or pretentious.

• Playful mood - The playful tone invites enjoyable banter and spirited conversation. It's not the place for tension or hostility.

• Home away from home - Occupants feel a similar warmth and belonging that they get from their own home.

Today's third places may not have all of these characteristics, but we can manufacture the closest thing to it to fill our needs for community.

Tactic: Creating a Third Place

Create a recurring invite for a casual activity for your friends. It can be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or whatever works for the crew.. (Make sure it's not required to get a headcount ahead of time for a reservation.) Make it a casual get-together where people can come and go as they please. Put it on the calendar and mention that you will be there for ~1-2 hours each month and anyone else that's around should swing by to catch up. Over time, you can encourage them to bring any of their friends that would be interested. Some ways I've tried this: pubs, barcades, pick-up soccer, public parks, local breweries, and standing dinner parties ⬇

@dxnielbennett

Those that can make it come each week #dinner #dinnerparty #pizza #friends

Join a team or hobby group that has both an activity component and casual component. This can look like a team you join that often gets together after the main activity concludes (a soccer team that goes to the pub or watches games together after playing) or groups that have this built in:

• Reading Rhythms does a great job of throwing "reading parties" where time is devoted to both individual reading, 1:1 conversations, and group discussions. All of this takes place at cozy bars and coffee shops where you can continue to mingle with friends. (Check it out here)

• During the winter, I hosted soccer events at The Ground. What's great about the location is once you are done playing, there is a bar and cozy couches that you can spend time hanging out with the people you just played with (we intentionally build meet and greet time into the last 30 minutes of our sessions). I often see people hanging around The Ground even when they don't have a game to play!

Create an online third place. I'm not personally a gamer but as I've spoken to people who are about third places, they are quick to point to their gaming communities. Gaming platforms like Roblox encourage communication and connection across millions of gamers. You have the opportunity to come and go as you please, interact with people and games you enjoy and there is still room for serendipity to meet new friends through various in-game experiences.

Do you have a third place? Respond to this email to let me know!

Devin's Finds:

📰 Third Places Are Where We Keep Each Other Company by Monika Jiang (5 minute read): Deeper dive into what third places are, what they are not, and the different types you can find throughout the world with a focus on how they can help cure our loneliness.

📰 A Case for Living Closer to Your Friends by Cat Sarsfield (5 minute read): Makes the case that living close to friends (like under 10 minutes close) actually helps you create a version of a third place with them. It allows for scheduled series of continuous catch-ups to become unstructured quality time where you drop in on each other and do more ordinary tasks side by side. 

🎞 Watch (6 minutes) The Happy Urbanist make the case that loss of third places is due to a hardware issue (i.e. physical locations). One of the harmful outcomes of not having casual places to congregate regularly is a shift towards a planned socialization culture. The Happy Urbanist breaks this down by showing visuals on how Barcelona cities are set up to facilitate third places and serendipity versus the typical construct in the U.S. that prevents it. ⬇

@jonjon.mp4

#stitch with @Ciao AmberC 1. Original barcelona video @The Happy Urbanist 2. Superillas @The Happy Urbanist 3. Places you drive through... See more

Best of luck building,

Devin