Posts Tagged ‘Ray Oldenburg’

Third Places in South Central Minnesota

February 25th, 2009

If you haven’t figured out what third places are all about, I’d highly recommend you check out an oral history project called “The Third Place Project.” 

Part of a larger project intended to record the oral history of the South Central Minnesota region, the “Third Place Project” focuses on third places in Mankato, MN.   

Although Mankato is not rural, I think the audio recordings do an outstanding job of showing the importance of third places in building a sense of community, regardless of a community’s size.  The recordings also offer great insights into how small business owners can compete against larger business in urban areas.  For instance:

In a slideshow about Dan’s Barbershop, you’ll hear long-time barber Dan Quaderer talk about the art of building relationships.  To quote Dan “”Haircutting isn’t about haircutting.  It’s about building relationships.”  

Through numerous audio recordings with customers of Mocol’s Supermarket, you can learn how the owners of a grocery store facilitated political discussions and encourage civic involvement.

Listening to the interviews on at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant, one gets the feeling that people from all walks of life make the place special, including college students and retirees. 

Developed by Dave Engen, an instructor in the Department of Speech Communication at Minnesota State University, the “The Third Place Project” is a must for anyone interested in third places. 

Other resources include:

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Developing Third Places

January 27th, 2009

In the podcast interview yesterday, John Delconte asked me what rural communities should do to spur the development of “third places”.  It was a great question!

Since the interview, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d like to share some thoughts.

First, I think it’s important that economic and community development groups recognize that “third places” are important and make their development part of the community’s development plan.  

Second, set out on a learning journey to understand third places as they relate to the needs of your community.  This means reading books like The Great Good Place and ­ Celebrating Third Places.  It also means talking to people in your community and developing an inventory of places where community building currently occurs.  During this research, you may find a business or place that is ready to be transformed into a third place. 

Third, use what you’ve learned to figure out how you can support the development of third places.  Some communities may consider establishing a loan fund to fill the gap in financing new businesses, while others may want to develop public spaces that facilitate the growth of third places.  One idea that I really like is working with young entrepreneurs - maybe a Millennial who is still in school - to establish their own business.   The point here is that each community is different.  

And lastly, if it’s a business, support it financially by doing business there.  Not only will you enjoy the friendships you develop, but you will be supporting the community as well. 

 

Notes: 

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Post offices as third places

January 16th, 2009

Rural post offices are special places.  That’s the message Katie at South Dakota Magazine presented yesterday. 

While telling a story about how the postmaster in one small town successfully delivered a letter addressed only with “Under the Water Tower in St. Lawrence”, Katie identifies one of the special qualities of rural communities: people (including post masters) know each other and try to help each other out - even when we forget things like addresses.  

Ray Oldenburg (who I wrote about yesterday) believes rural post offices are special for another reason:  they are informal gather places where community is built.  In his words, they are “third places.” 

I’ve never felt that post offices meet the criteria for being “third places.”  That said, I think older people probably look at post offices differently.

Since reading Oldenburg’s ­The Great Good Place, I’ve tried to watch our local post office from my office, just across the street.  I’ve noticed that older residents do tend to stop for short conversations — meeting the main criteria for a third place.  Post offices are also easily accessible and people from all walks of life meet there. So, we can check a few more criteria off the list that create third places.  But to me, post offices just doesn’t have the feel that I want a third place to have. 

Most likely, post offices once served as more effective third places than they do today, hence we see older generations still using them as places for conversation. 

But I think it also points to another of Oldenburg’s key arguments:  we’ve lost many of our third places; and with them we’ve lost much of our sense of community. I hope that we haven’t lost so many of them, however, that our postmasters stop delivering mail when they don’t include proper addresses.  

Other posts about post offices and third places:

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Does your community need a coffee shop and other Third Places?

January 14th, 2009

During an economic development planning meeting in 2004, several high school students claimed our community (Howard, SD) needed a coffee shop.  That statement confounded most of the adults in attendance.  “What do you mean? We’ve already got two,” a community leader retorted, referring to the town’s two small cafés. 

Beyond the obvious differences between a coffee shop and a small town café, most of the adults in the room missed the point the students were making:  Younger people enjoyed going to larger communities to hang out in coffee shops.  If we wanted our community to be a place for their generation, we needed a coffee shop. 

To my disappointment, the coffee shop idea didn’t make the final cut on our prioritized list of projects, deferring instead to more traditional “job creation” strategies. At the time, I thought a coffee shop would serve as an excellent “amenity”, making our community more attractive to both Gen Y and newcomers.  I’ve since learned that there’s a lot more going on in coffee houses than coffee and conversation.  And I have sociologist Ray Oldenburg to thank for this discovery.

 

Coffee Houses are “Third Places”

It has been two decades since Oldenburg invented the name “third places” in his influential book The Great Good Place to describe informal gathering places like cafés, pubs, bookstores, community centers and main streets.

To Oldenburg, third places carry out important community building functions that cannot be fulfilled by “first places” (our homes) and “second places” (our places of work).  They become the places where people develop personal relationships and a sense of community.  Without them, families are left to sit at home and watch television by themselves. 

Oldenburg goes into great depth explaining the community building functions carried out by third places.  We’ll talk about them more in later posts, but for now I’d like to focus on helping readers recognize third places in their own communities– not all cafés, pubs, bookstores and community centers meet the qualifications of third places. 

 

Characteristics of Third Places

Third places come in many forms, but Oldenburg identifies eight characteristics that third places share:

 

Howard’s new Third Place

Last summer (2008), three entrepreneurial ladies opened a coffee shop in Howard called Higher Grounds.  I’ve been watching it ever since and have concluded that it is developing into an outstanding third place.  It really seems to be filling the need people have to experience a sense of community, which may explain why it’s a success. 

So, what about your rural community?  Do you have any good examples that you can share?  I’d really like to create a list of unique third places.  Hopefully, these examples can serve as an inspiration to residents in rural communities that currently lack strong third places.

 

Other resources on coffee shops and third places

Note:  Photo courtesy of Elisa Sand of the Madison Daily Leader

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Learning to live in Rural Places

January 9th, 2009

Is it possible that many people who move to rural communities don’t know how to live in rural communities?

That question began to gnaw at me following my introduction to a book titled Get Urban!  The Complete Guide to City Living. Kyle Ezell, the book’s author, is an urban enthusiast who advances the idea that many people who move to downtown, urban centers don’t understand how to live there.  He argues that basic tenants of urban living — like riding the bus, carrying groceries as you walk home from work, and developing friendship among the hustle and bustle of urban streets - are all foreign activities to new urbanites, schooled in the car culture of suburbia. 

Thought Ezell’s thesis may be hard for rural enthusiasts to accept, it has grown on me over time, and I began to wonder if new residents in rural communities were facing the same challenges. Ever since, I’ve been on a quest to answer that question.  I’ve yet to reach a definitive answer, but I’ve identified several conclusions listed below. 

This last point is particularly important, and over the next few weeks I intend to share a great deal more on the subject.  Not only has Oldenburg identified third places as the “anchors of community life,” but he also believes they form a starting point for introducing new residents into a community.  And like their urban counterparts, new rural residents could use a little help learning to live in their rural communities.  I hope third places are a part of the answer.

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