You may have heard of third places before, but in case it’s new to you, they’re essentially community spaces where you can chill & socialize…Like here, I suppose! But typically they refer to in-person community spaces.
Does your area of the world still have a number of these, or are they in the decline? 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’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?