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“Starbucks says that it’s evolving its third place model from being a physical store to a feeling,” - that is so comically dystopian.

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Super interesting and a lil bit sad for someone who was in Seattle when sbux just started and it was all about hanging out with friends with a triple shot something to keep u going through finals. The drive thru and Frappuccino-ization of it all is crappy. Even the inside of a lotta Starbucks now feel oppressive

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Yeah, I remember actually being excited when Starbucks came to Indianapolis in the '90s - like it made the city more cosmopolitan or something, lol. I also remember that it was actually appealing to hang out there back then (although that was at least partially because I was a suburban teenager who had fewer public places available to hang out at, which was part of my point in the piece).

I found myself in a Starbucks a couple days after publishing this and the difference was even more extreme than I'd realized - all the chairs/couches/tables were empty but the place was packed, but only with people waiting in line or waiting for their order so they could then get out as quickly as possible.

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I think it's not only starbucks unfortunately, it's the idea of "the cosy cafe as a third place". It's so hard to find an inviting place to read a book and meet with friends and do some work (all in the same day) these days, and it is sad.

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Aug 22Liked by Drew Austin

Your friendly neighborhood library would be happy to host you.

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Yes, I agree. Starbucks probably led the way on this but many independent cafes have followed suit. The rise of laptop work/wifi has to be a big part of it - it was fine when most people weren't doing work at cafes even if a few still were, but above a certain threshold it creates a totally different vibe.

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Great point about serendipity requiring friction. This is one of the things I notice when I go back to visit the U.S. - everything is optimized for efficiency and productivity, people move from controlled environment to controlled environment in their private automobiles. In much of suburbia, everything requires planning and the opportunity for chance encounters is slim to none.

On the bright side, I'm coming across more and more new urbanist communities that are trying to fix this issue, Trilith, Serenbe & Culdesac Tempe to name a few.

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Yes absolutely - car culture alone is such a huge part of this. Pedestrian activity is a huge source of serendipity, probably the most important single variable. Although it can vary a lot even within walkable environments (which was sort of my point about Starbucks - how even the elements of this type of urbanism, like cafes, can become optimized for efficiency and therefore less social).

Agreed that there are promising new developments emerging! Hope this trend continues.

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Is the third place a product of early modernity (IE the pubs, taverns, etc. of Shakespeare's England or golden age Amsterdam) or does it have predecessors in earlier time periods?

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Drinking dens, taverns, cook houses have always been around as long as we've had shops I think

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Would it make sense to talk of such places as third places in the context of, say, Imperial Rome, or are the sociological differences sufficient to make that only a surface-level comparison?

I think of the modernizing Japanese context, where the floating world of geisha houses and sake bars, etc. seems to be something fairly analogous.

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I haven't read Oldenburg's book so not sure how he situates it historically, but I would say the third place (as we use the term now) is indeed a modern concept - probably arose from industrialization and the more decisive separation of home and work that it produced. In premodern culture it seems like the various categories of place (first, second, third) were less distinct, so there would have been less sense of a need for third places than we have now. Of course, taverns etc existed before industrialization - places that would be considered third places today, but maybe only retroactively.

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The "Third Place" dates back all the way to the ancient Greeks and the Agora!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Because living conditions were so horrible back then, they spent only about an hour of every day at "home" - the rest of the day they were out and about socializing.

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