Third Place vs. Right to the City

Seems like everyone wants to talk about third place lately. Honestly, I don't really get it. Ray Oldenburg - the creator of the theory - was not progressive by most definitions and he built his theory off of strict masculinity rooted in misogyny and homophobia. I really don't like Ray Oldenburg and I'll show you exactly why in this video. And on top of that I'll give you something else to talk about - a more relevant theory called "The Right to the City," which is the idea that we control how the places we live change over time - not profit-seeking capitalists.
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Check out the Zoned Out Podcast!

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Sources (in order of reference):

Ray Oldenburg - Celebrating the Third Place, 2001 (unfortunately I cannot find a readily-available pdf online, I got the E-book for this video. But also you would be better served in avoiding this one, it's terrible)

[bidddyyy]

Ray Oldenburg you have 24hrs to respond.

[JC_Cali]

As someone who did a minor in urban studies (major in architecture) and slowly but surely evolved into socialist political ideology post-grad, hearing the attack against "third place" felt heretical - but then you did what you advised us to do - deliver instead an almost utopian yet realistic imagination of what to do instead. Massive kudos sir!

[sahar]

"Karl marx saying he would annihilate me would cure me of my depression, I would no longer be alienated" lmao

[rinny]

I attend the university at which he taught in the town in which he died. There is a room in the school library he and his friend built based on his book, and it changed my life. "The GGP" as my friends and I call it has basically saved my social life at this school.
I got curious. I did a writing project on him and how that room came to exist. In an interview, his friend described him as stubborn, a misogynist, pretty egostistical, and definitely into bars. He was probably pretty centrist, yeah. I was kind of disapointed tbh, being a communist. I haven't read his whole book, but my project encouraged me to get a copy. So far it does scream "I'm still a capitalist" and it's so frustrating.
It was a fun project. His friend was very kind and more on the left than the man himself likely was. I'm nonbinary and he was cool about that in our interview.
That room has still done so much for me. The man himself was kind of underwhelming to the point that its actually sad. He was disliked enough by the faculty that they didnt even do an announcement about his death like they do anyone else who once worked at the uni. The friend I interviewed found out about his death practically through the grapevine because no one told him when it happened.
I will say he had an epic garage, though. Stuck a door on the outside, turned it into a lounge, and proceeded to invite friends over twice a week to hang out and drink. COVID really messed the guy up.
Third places will not fix capitalism. It needs to be destroyed. But they are pretty cool and useful. The theory needs tempered a LOT. I hope to write on it in the future. I'm graduating with my degree in Anthropology this year and it would be a neat career-starter

TLDR: he lived a pretty sad end, he was in fact kind of a dick and probably a centrist. His theory is cool but not a fix-all.

[blakewnelson]

I'm a leftist and love biking to work, so started attending a local strong-towns meeting to advocate for biking in my city. I kept finding myself confused by the complete lack of imagination: is painting some lines on the road or getting rid of zoning restrictions going to fix our car addition? I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to notice the libertarian motivation at the heart of strong-towns.
Your videos have really helped me wrap my head around why the centrist approach to urban planning leaves me feeling so underwhelmed. This one is another banger.

[rainbowkrampus]

I don't think any leftist believes that developers will "build us out of capitalism". The perspective is one of building out the imagination. When people are actually able to engage with some small benefit of people-centric urban development, they will be more capable of imagining an even more robust development. You ever have a conversation about building people-centric development with someone who is totally locked into the suburban lifestyle? It's not easy. Their entire perspective is warped by the environment they know. Change is viewed as a threat. Productive conversations are difficult to have in those circumstances.

Ya gotta meet people where they're at. Blasting their brain with Debord isn't generally going to get you very far when their entire concept of the urban environment is locked into capitalist modes of thinking. You've got to make some cracks to let some light in. The most surefire way to do that is through personal experience. You're not going to be able to build that experience without developers, in our current context. They kinda have a monopoly on these things. A monopoly backed by the state in key ways. Try setting up a coffee shop somewhere without a whole host of permits and other assorted bureaucratic paraphernalia and enjoy your visit from the police. It's an uphill battle and you're never going to build the kind of movement described by Harvey without something tangible to show people. "Look at this picture of Denmark." doesn't actually have much sway outside of lefty circles.

It's great to think bigger. I don't know of anyone who would say that building some bike lanes is the end goal. But an outright rejection of efforts to build out the public imagination is self defeating. Also kinda ignores the reality that we can do more than one thing at once. We can work with what we have and work towards something better. These things are not mutually exclusive.

[robertstuckey]

Saying you cant zone a third place into existence but calling for better zoning isnt necessarily a contradiction. Just because zoning isnt sufficient for a third place doesn't mean zoning isnt necessary.

[mariannerichard]

Oldenburg was a man of his time (cold war era), burdened by his own personal issues, who had the intelligence to understand and explain the concept of 3rd place, but fail to see it beyond what was really familiar to him. There are still good concepts to use from his books, but yeah, it shouldn't be the only one we work with.

[runlikethewind]

This brightened my day.


As a social worker / therapist constantly attempting to help people cope with the alienation that is clearly systemic, I greatly appreciate this analysis.

Karl Marx saying he was going to annihilate me would cure my depression too! Haha

[LiquidDemocracyNH]

First of all: great video.

I have two things to add: one is that the concept of "the right to the city" doesn't do a very good job of clarify at what level of society decisions about investments should be made. For example, you said in your video "if there's not enough housing in a given neighborhood, we build public housing there. If a given neighborhood needs more bike lanes, we build more bike lanes." But a lot of that information is very detail-oriented. It's the kind of thing that makes more sense to talk about at a city council meeting than in the halls of Congress.

The concept also doesn't do a good enough job of explaining how cities get access to the "surplus." Normally the answer to this for socialists is simple, by taking various industries under state control, and planning investment. But at the level of the city it's less clear. Would the money for these projects be coming from a central government and then individual cities get to decide what to do with that money? Would cities themselves take local businesses under public control and reinvest their surpluses? Would this be paid for through taxation?

Personally I believe that the only way for a Right to the City to work is for it to be truly local in nature and a big part of the reason it hasn't happened is because we've been trapped for too long in a false choice between neoliberal capitalism, and top-down central planning. What we need is a form of planning that vests more power in local communities to make decisions for themselves. Conscious, active decisions, not profit-oriented ones, but still autonomous ones.

Second: I think one of the problems with Third places is that the emphasis is on building coffee shops or community centers, and isn't on building a complete cohesive community that surrounds them.

When I was in college I had such a deep sense of community, why? Because my friends lived within a five minute walk of me, because we were united by our age group, because people studying the same thing shared classes together, because people in the same wing of a dorm had to use the same communal bathroom (on my floor it was men and women alike too, which I think brought us closer together gender-wise) and because the R.A.s were tasked with regularly hosting events to bring people together.

Many intentional communities have a similar cohesive all-in-one approach to things.

I think that in order for Urbanization to truly fight alienation it's not enough to make places more walkable, or build more third places, etc. we need to start thinking of every aspect of a neighborhood in unison. People shouldn't just live in individual houses and individually commute to individual coffee shops for their sense of community. They should live in real communities.

The unit needs to change. Right now we make decisions at the level of an entire city through government or at the level of individual houses through development. What we need is to make the unit a given neighborhood.

The Coffee Shop, the walkability, the shared interests and values need to be all a part of a package deal.

The best way to do this would be to invest significantly in the creation of new Intentional Communities (here using a broad definition of Intentional Community that doesn't always have to mean the most crunchy-granola form of it.)

[rykkernyberg]

I'd guess that most people discussing third places right now have never heard of Ray Oldenburg, so I don't think his politics have anything to do with 21st century urbanists desires to avoid suburban alienation and to find places to experience community.

[fionaaruldassart]

I'm so glad to have found this video, I didn't know anything about Ray Oldenburg - and I'm excited to learn more about radical planning! That being said, I think "third places" as a phrase and concept that's basically divorced from Oldenburg IS helping to move the needle/provide language for people to see whats missing in their life, so I don't find it to be a problematic phase on its own, and it's probably here to stay. Now it's a matter of expanding imagination beyond that, as you said.

[dumbguy]

This has made me realise that my city's new library is critisised as being a big coffee shop with books on the wall, and visiting it made me wonder why the kids area is not separate from the rest of the library so sound carries and students and teenagers are loudly talking, which i attributed to the decline of parenting and public standards. Although now i realise its a community centre with the name library. Which isn't necessarily bad, and perhaps that's the way libraries have to move to get use out of it, its a very popular library compared to the old city library.

[deansibinski]

"speaking of not-very-leftist..." midroll ad break. I lol'd.

[Tai]

First of all, I disagree that we can't build on Oldenburg's ideas. He doesn't have ownership over a concept, the same way Darwin doesn't have ownership over the theory of evolution. I don't have to endorse Oldenburg's politics to explore ideas that he suggested. For example, he's totally wrong about everything he says concerning gender; does that invalidate what he says about the need for socialization?

Second, you can take the idea of a third place into account when planning your city. Places that have space for people to sit and talk without the pressure of spending money will be more inviting and could potentially become someone's third place. You can prioritize certain kinds of businesses, like bars and restaurants, or make more parks or walkable spaces. Nothing guarantees that it will become THE spot for your city, but it can only do a city good to have options.

[unsocialburrito]

I think the skatepark is a third place.

[dnbqup]

I want to start with saying that I really appreciate you teaching me about the Right to the City. I agree that it's an extremely helpful movement to rally behind.

However:

The Right always appropriates words from the Left, such as the word Libertarian. Why can't we appropriate the word 3rd Space?

Sure, Oldenburg had some cringe beliefs, but i think everyone from all backgrounds is feeling alienated, and I don't see a problem with rallying behind 3rd Spaces. Most people who are into 3rd Spaces don't share his weird views on women.

Like you said, there's power in a unified name. Lets *use* the unified name that people from all walks of life are *already using.* We can hijack and appropriate the movement with suggestions on how to *actually achieve it.*

One of the major reasons that Leftists don't achieve their goals is purity politics; like you said yourself, this channel isn't meant to reach anyone outside of the Left. You don't want to use a useful word because of some beliefs that the creator has were bad. You don't want to inject yourself into the 3rd Space movement because some people are Centrists. That just seems like you're shooting yourself in the foot.

We need to be present in the spaces of other groups that are *so close* to understanding the real issue, but we'd rather just tell them they're wrong and then isolate ourselves.

We should be an influence on others. We can inject the ideology of "the Right to the City" into 3rd Space movements.

[Distortion]

You articulated vague misgivings I had about urbanism beautifully. Thank you

[buildinganewworld]

5:59 "the library probably shouldn't be burdened to host so many library functions." This is huge. It reminds me a lot of how cops have to take on so many additional functions as well.

[willb]

My third place was a magic the gathering store that supported competitive events. It was only a 5 minute drive from my house. It has closed down because of the death of the owner and now the next closest thing is 45 minutes away :(