Every Community Deserves a Third Place

Ray Oldenburg is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. He is the author of "The Great Good Place."

Updated April 13, 2014, 9:10 PM

The Chicago heat wave of 1995 brutally established the importance of safe neighborhoods, especially for the elderly who will represent 20 percent of our population by 2030. In run-down North Lawndale, 19 people died, whereas in economically healthy South Lawndale, three perished. The victims were overwhelmingly old people.

Due to heavy migration to the suburbs, North Lawndale had become a commercial and social desert. It was no longer a walking community as there was nothing left to walk to; the stores and other gathering places were gone. The residents lacked access to places with air-conditioning and were reluctant, in any case, to go out and leave their apartments unattended.

Bad things happen when neighborhoods lose their economic viability. So the question becomes, what can be done to restore it? One answer is to create great "people places" where they are most needed.

In Buffalo, N.Y., Prish Moran was thought to be “not all there” when she put money into an old Victorian structure in a vacant and dilapidated neighborhood. It now houses the highly popular Sweet_Ness 7 café with several apartments on the upper floor. Moran acquires “about a building a year” from the city’s demolition list and works her magic on them. A second coffee house followed the first and requests for her to create others in new developments or old neighborhoods come to her about once a week.

In Lake Forest Park, a city north of Seattle, Ron Sher acquired a failed shopping center that had been a haven for crime and drugs. He transformed it into a highly successful community center with ethnic restaurants, entertainment every night, a bookstore and a “chess alley.” Nearby property values shot up.

These are dramatic examples of the “third place” (home and work being the first and second) that neighborhoods need to thrive and, in many cases, survive. Many good attempts at creating such a space fail for three reasons: high taxes, excessive regulation and escalating rent. City officials would do well to realize that urban vitality depends on how citizens spend their leisure hours by giving well-intentioned community organizers and developers tax breaks or rent subsidies to plan and build innovative gathering places. Joyful association in the public domain is far better than watching television in our lifeless subdivisions.