Third places, true citizen spaces
Published today in the UNESCO Courier
Here’s our article in the UNESCO Courier, out today:
Third places, true citizen spaces
In the 1980s, American sociologist Ray Oldenburg developed the notion of a "third place": a space for informal, free social interaction, essential to democracy. The concept has gained unexpected popularity over the years. Coffee houses serve as a perfect example of the third place.
The website has translated versions. Here’s “El ‘tercer lugar’, un verdadero espacio ciudadano” and “Les tiers-lieux, des espaces citoyens à part entière.” The Chinese translation isn’t posted yet but it’s coming, and I see there will also be Russian and Arabic, making this my most translated piece of writing to date.
Having the article in different languages is great for me, as I can build my vocabulary for the time when I’ll be talking about the new edition. The original edition of The Great Good Place was published in Russian and Japanese, and I just renewed the Korean license. A Chinese translation is in progress.
Coffee shops in the United States are quieter than libraries these days, and Starbucks is removing seats and tables. But the coffee house tradition is global, and important. Here’s hoping that there will be small independent cafes that keep it alive. Tomorrow would have been Ray’s 91st birthday and I’ll be toasting him with friends who are even older. And I’ll be talking to my mother, who is 88, after her return from a two-week holiday in Europe, delayed from spring 2020. (A salute, too, to my brother David who organized the trip.) I hope you have people like this in your life. I’m sure they have stories about the third places they have known and loved, the kind of places we may need to recreate today.