THE THIRD PLACE

 

 

We all love to visit and live in Rome or Paris, Lisbon or Barcelona, Prague or Krakow. What do you think makes them so attractive and livable?  Why are Melbourne and Vienna repeatedly chosen as the most livable cities in the world? There can be a host of reasons - safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability, public transport and access to goods and services. But the thing that stands out most for me is the abundance of ‘the third places’ these cities have.

 

A third place is a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg and refers to places where people spend time between home ('first' place) and work ('second' place). We have a “first place”, which is where we live; we have a “second place”, which is where we work; and then there’s a third place, somewhere for the community where we like to spend our leisure time, somewhere public, somewhere relaxed, somewhere that binds a city and gives it character, as well as plays host to its characters. You may not be familiar with that term, but you will definitely be familiar with the concept.

 

A third place is a piazza or plaza, a city square. It could be a park. It could be a cafe, a bar, a church, a football field, even a mall. Now picture a European city, your favourite European city, and tell me what you love about it. You probably love the history in this city of yours, and maybe the natural beauty. You love the architecture, the mix of styles that has appeared over the centuries. You love the culture, the people, the food, the drink. And I can almost guarantee that, without even knowing it, you love the “third places”. After all, when you don’t live or work in a city, these are the venues you most often find yourself in.

Barcelona 

 

By Oldenburg’s definition, these third places need to be egalitarian, places a person of any socio-economic status could visit and feel comfortable. They need to be spaces that encourage conversations and social mixing; that have regular visitors who set their tone, while still being available to one-time drop-ins (like tourists); they need to be subtle, wholesome, playful, and comfortable. A place where you can pop in and out with little or no money; as a result, social hierarchy is left at the door, and all are equal, allowing for unexpected but delightful professional mingling— a CEO and a street performer can be seen chatting over drinks, while a fashion designer and a mechanic share a laugh at the bar.

To me, these third places define the true character of a city like San Sebastian in Spain, with its pintxos bars that sit below apartment blocks, where drinkers and diners of all generations gather to socialize. Or maybe it’s like Rome with its cafe-lined piazzas, natural meeting places for people from all walks of life. Or perhaps you’re thinking of the marketplaces of Scandinavia, where shoppers chat and eat and buy all the things they need. Or, it can be the Hyde Park of London!

 

Having lived in Melbourne I know I love it because of its ‘third places’. It has markets like South Melbourne and Prahran, natural meeting points for residents, natural places to spend time outside work and home life. Melbourne has restaurants and bars dotted throughout its residential suburbs too – Fitzroy, Brunswick, Collingwood, Footscray each with a flavour of its own, and a culture of visiting those third places to socialize. Melbourne also has Australia’s best pubs and four major sports stadiums basically within the CBD, which duplicate as actual live music venues.

 

It always seems like everyone in Europe lives and works within an easy stroll of third places; everyday life is designed around these areas, these gathering points for citizens and tourists and everyone else. It is not uncommon to find old men sitting around playing chess, groups of kids hanging out on steps, families in parks enjoying picnic and friends getting together for aperitivo or ‘hora de vermut’.

 

And now, think about the cities in India. Where are our third places? What are they? The older cities like Bombay and Calcutta had them in abundance but growing population, mindless development and greed have encroached upon them and destroyed the ‘old world charm’. Only recently when the municipal corporation of Mumbai planned to get rid of the famous Hanging Gardens atop the Malabar Hills in the name of redevelopment, I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Yet another ‘third place’ is being sacrificed at the altar of mindless commercialization.

Hanging Garden, Mumbai

 

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and I’m sure you’ll be able to come back at me with examples. But by and large, India, and much of the “developing world”, has failed to incorporate third places into our cities and towns. Planned cities like Chandigarh and isolated exceptions like Goa and Puducherry may stand out as a revolting minority, but how long their revolt will last is a scary thought.

 

Think about the layout of most Indian towns and cities. You have your central business district, where there’s a main street with all the shops, a few eateries, a shopping mall nearby with a Smart Bazaar or Spencers. And then, in a totally separate area, you have the places people live, sprawling residential suburbs that often have no shops or cafes in them at all, sometimes not even a playground, just house after house, building after building, high-rise flats arranged like Lego pieces. Squeezing between them are slums where the workforce which works in our households live, much to the annoyance of the aristocracy.

 

Then there is the great Indian dream, a quarter-acre farm-house; it’s not walking-distance access to tea stalls, corner stores and barbers, eateries and parks. Our homes are our castles. There’s far more focus here on privacy and getting home life right. We keep on building such castles that will isolate us from people  instead of building community spaces that will bring us all together. Our first place, equipped with security cameras and tall boundary walls, is keeping us away from the rest of the world and turning us into self centered cynics, distrusting everybody else. Our celebrations inside these first places are for muted and for a select few of our tribe only. We wear the same clothes, eat the same food, drink the same drink, discuss the same topics, adhere to the same set of views and have succeeded in creating an echo chamber cocoon for ourselves with no scope of entry for fresh air and no hope for fresh ideas.

 

Our narrow domestic walls guarding our ‘first places’ has broken our small world into fragments and our only hope now is to invest in our ‘third places’ so that our minds can get a breath of fresh air, a whiff of fresh ideas that can lead us forward into a better quality of life for all. The idea that only we, a select few, with expensive castle like ‘first place’ working in a state of the art ‘second’ place’ can thrive as islands of happiness in an ocean unhappiness, struggle and misery, is simply a figment of our imagination.

 

Loneliness has become a significant concern in modern society, with many individuals feeling alienated and separated from others. We have enormous screens with streaming movies, and we can deliver to our homes at any moment using our cell phones. Devoid of third place in our cities, we have a large population of virtual friends in WhatsApp but very few real flesh and blood friends. Short-term sleep issues, drug usage issues, and difficulties with depression are more prevalent among lonely persons. An increased chance of heart attack, stroke, and cancer are among the more negative health effects. Even more intriguing is that the most significant reported rates of loneliness are among Generation Z and Millennials.

 

A lack of “third places” to socialize has caused dissatisfaction among many people. By giving individuals a space to congregate, form relationships with others, and foster a feeling of belonging and community, third places have significantly contributed to the fight against loneliness and the promotion of mental and physical well-being.

 

Third place transforms a drab and boring city into a vibrant and living city. Third places are like the glue that hold communities together, but as they fade away, the people who  are loyal to their place and return regularly to unwind and socialize are losing friends and getting left out and lonely and the society we live in is getting segregated.

Hyde Park, London