Ray Oldenburg (1932-2022) is known internationally as author of The Great Good Place (1989/2023), in which he coined the term “third place” and made a case for the importance of informal public gathering places. He defined the term as “a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), a third place allows an individual to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. 

Oldenburg detailed how and why such places have always been at the center of public life, and showed that bars, coffee shops, and general stores (as well as, according to one of his lists, lounges, taverns, saloons, doughnut shops, pool halls, bingo halls, lodges, and youth recreation centers) are central to local democracy and community vitality. By exploring in this and other books how third places work and the various roles they serve, Oldenburg offered inspiration and insights that are useful to individuals and communities everywhere.

Biography

With a degree in English and Social Studies from Minnesota's Mankato State University, and a Masters and PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, Ray Oldenburg became a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Although he was a sociologist, he operated more like an anthropologist, out in the field amongst the native population. He had no fear of leaving the ivory tower. He loved Main Street.

Oldenburg was consulted by entrepreneurs, community and urban planners, churches, and others seeking to enhance social experiences and human connections. He also worked with cities including San Jose, Stockholm, and Osaka, spoke to planners, business groups, and on college campuses, and went on to edit a collection of stories called Celebrating the Great Good Place.

When he retired, the university created a “Third Place” community room in the library. In later years, he hosted friends in his own “third place,” a converted garage saloon. His latest and last book was The Joy of Tippling.

Perspectives

Third Places. Oldenburg defined third place as “a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), a third place allows an individual to put aside their worries and concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. 

He identified key characteristics of all third places. They are on neutral ground and promote social equity by leveling the status of guests. Conversation is the main activity and the mood is playful. Strangers are welcome, and there are regulars who feel a piece of themselves is rooted in the space. They enjoy the same feelings of warmth, possession, and belonging as they would in their own homes. 

Third places provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and improve well-being. Oldenburg wrote, “Third places have been parent to other forms of community affiliation and association that eventually coexist with them. Free assembly does not begin, as so many writers on the subject seem to assume, with formally organized associations. It does not begin in fraternal orders, reading circles, parent-teacher associations, or town halls. Those bodies are drawn from a prior habit of association nurtured in third places. There must be places in which people can find and sort one another out across the barriers of social difference. There must be places akin to the colonial tavern visited by Alexander Hamilton, which offered, as he recorded, ‘a genuine social solvent with a very mixed company of different nations and religions.’”

Two recordings with Ray Oldenburg, one of them drawing from interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic, are available at greatgoodplace.org. 

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."

Accolades

"Eloquent and visionary, [The Great Good Place] is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place - opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book." - PlannersWeb.com

"The Great Good Place has put into words and focus what I've been doing all my life, from the barbershop I remember as a child to the bookstore I now own... Ray Oldenburg has defined those good places while still recognizing the magical chemistry they require."  - Victor W. Herman, owner of Horizon Books

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Note: The original version of this article was published on December 31, 2008. This version has been updated by Karen Christensen, whose work with Oldenburg includes an article about third places in the UNESCO Courier magazine. Oldenburg left her with the task of writing a sequel to The Great Good Place, drawing on their discussions and on her new research.