The Third Place Forum
Ray Oldenburg, Ph.D.
December 11, 2003; 8:00–10:00 AM
Harry P. Leu Gardens, Camellia Room
On Thursday, December 11, 2003, The Metropolitan Center and the Department of Environmental Studies at Rollins College presented Dr. Ray Oldenburg at a forum "Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the 'Great Good Places' at the Heart of Our Communities." Dr. Oldenburg is the author of a 1999 book of the same title. He coined the term "third place" and is widely recognized as one of the world's leading advocates for and authorities on great good places. His book The Great Good Place, was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice for 1989. He is frequently sought after as a media commentator and consultant to entrepreneurs, community and urban planners, and others.
Biography of Ray Oldenburg
Ray Oldenburg, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Sociology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. He is best known for writing The Great Good Place. He works as a consultant to entrepreneurs, community and urban planners, churches, and others seeking to establish great good places. He has been invited to speak at symposia and conferences across the US, including at the Urban City Research Conference 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Oldenburg holds a Bachelor of English and Social Studies from Mankato State University, Minnesota, and a Master and PhD in Sociology from the University of Minneapolis. He held positions at the University of West Florida from 1971 to 2001, prior to which he taught and researched at the University of Nevada, Stout State University, and the University of Minnesota. Oldenburg also worked as an elementary and high school teacher, and as a dental technician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
Perspectives
Third Places
Oldenburg identifies third places, or "great good places," as the public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. Third places "host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work." Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafes, coffeehouses, post offices, and other third places are the heart of a community's social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.
Quotable
"In the absence of informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and consumption."
"What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably—a 'place on the corner,' real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile."
"Most needed are those 'third places' which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase 'third places' derives from considering our homes to be the 'first' places in our lives, and our work places the 'second.'"
"The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends...They are the heart of a community's social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape."
"Life without community has produced, for many, a life style consisting mainly of a home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle. Social well-being and psychological health depend upon community. It is no coincidence that the 'helping professions' became a major industry in the United States as suburban planning helped destroy local public life and the community support it once lent."
"Totally unlike Main Street, the shopping mall is populated by strangers. As people circulate about in the constant, monotonous flow of mall pedestrian traffic, their eyes do not cast about for familiar faces, for the chance of seeing one is small. That is not part of what one expects there. The reason is simple. The mall is centrally located to serve the multitudes from a number of outlying developments within its region. There is little acquaintance between these developments and not much more within them. Most of them lack focal points or core settings and, as a result, people are not widely known to one another, even in their own neighborhoods, and their neighborhood is only a minority portion of the mall's clientele."
Publications
Books
Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the "Great Good Places" at the Heart of Our Communities, Marlowe & Company, 2000.
Parallel Utopias: The Quest for Community, by Richard Sexton, Ray Oldenburg (Contributor), Jr. Turnbull, Chronicle Books, 1995.
The Great Good Place, New York: Paragon House, 1991. 3rd Edition with photo update published in 1999, New York: Marlowe and Company. Japanese edition forthcoming, Kajima Institute Publishing Company.
Dr. Oldenburg has also published numerous articles in various journals, magazines, and other publications.