Third place

So I started thinking about that too.

And I'm like, okay, what are they noticing? What is it about this third space that is so vital to the success of these brands? And it's a few things.

You've got Gen Z. and Gen Alpha who are driven by experience, not necessarily consumption of consumerism, okay? Their consumerism looks very different.

So you've got, what does it look like to the next buying generation? And people always joke like, oh, it's a boomer thing, but those boomers have so much intentionality on their connectivity.

So how are we... reuniting people.

So you've got your home space, space one, space two is your workspace, which became remote or absolutely nothing, which some people love, but there's still a point of isolation.

And now this third space, where can I get a sense of belonging? Where can I create? Where can I buy? What the cafes are doing great, what the coffee shops and how they're bringing in merch to the vibes and the aesthetics is so vital to that transaction because it's no longer a transaction.

So the third space has become the space of growth.

Think of a park, a coffee shop or a bar.

We know that being around other people is crucial for our feeling of community and our mental health, so it's time to start treating third spaces as a crucial part of our urban landscape.

I would work to establish a first-of-its-kind third space commission where passionate Lexingtonians can discover, support, and build up these engines of community.

It tells me that you probably realize or feel that there's a lot of loneliness and mental and health issues among your generation.

It's been solved for 35 years.

Ray Oldenburg, a sociologist, wrote a book in 1989 called The Great Good Place, and he coined the term Third Place.

Home is the first place, work is the second, And the third place is where you relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances.

Bars are explicitly on his list.

Cafes, libraries, parks, barbershops.

But bars are the canonical example.

So Daniel's not being a grump.

He's asking for a third place, and he doesn't have the vocabulary.

She's a global nonprofit leader whose life has spanned cultures, countries, and communities.

Together, we're gonna explore why building a third place may be one of the most important leadership challenges of our time.

Farah, welcome to What Works.

Thank you so much, Marla.

There is a disconnect when understanding the value of 3D engagement and connection versus digital.

I just have to be honest with you.

I was looking at my calendar, and I saw this thing about the Third Place: Rebuilding Human Connection.

I'm like, "Ooh, that must be a s- a seminar I signed up for.

I think...

I feel like you can kind of just turn anything into a third place.

And I guess really at the end of the day, it's about like showing people it's really not that hard to turn anything into a third place.

Right.

And so like I think about sessions, TEDx sessions that just happened recently.

It was, it was, it was amazing.

The vibe was really hard to put into words.

So I think it's just, yeah, like just about any place can be a third place.

And then post COVID, I found it did start to get that kind of transactional feel where it was less consistent that people were coming it was more in and out and it kind of felt it probably started to feel more servicey you know I mean just come in do your class get out of there um and I think now for uh like for me for example I feel like from our end and I'm only just one part of the the business that uh or the the team that runs the yoga hub um But on our end, it is like more the side of like, okay, how can we purposefully and intentionally create that feeling of community in a welcoming space? And again, not just, I said, I want this.

I think also like that word community can almost become like a marketing buzzword and, you know, So I hope it doesn't sound, it might sound this way, I hope it doesn't sound this way, but it's also just, okay, from a business perspective, hopefully that'd be good for us, but just on a like personal human level, I feel like these sort of third spaces that people sometimes call them are being pulled out of society a little bit.

that there's there is less but i only listened to a podcast the other day talking about the the working men's clubs in the uk in like the 70s that were okay it was a pub where people would go to drink but it was a social space you know what i mean and and the money collected was put back into the club and they they ran events and all this other stuff and um i'm sure it's the same in dublin even like i don't really drink anymore but like a night out in the pub will set you back a lot of money these days.

So

But then over time, you really start to realize like, oh, these people are coming for the relationships more so than they might even be coming for exercise, whether it's a relationship with a coach or the people in the group.

This was became their third space.

And so it ends up going from maybe a pug to a feature once you realize, oh, now I want to double down on this.

How are ways that I can make this community aspect more valuable by continually finding ways to get these people together or doing things in a community aspect, putting together events where these people become closer and then that gym becomes stickier and everybody kind of wins both the gym owner as well as the client.

So like the thing was, hey, you would work in the office and then people would go out and drink after, right? That isn't really a thing anymore because that work social culture is largely gone.

from a lot of major cities especially.

And so I think that, again, the gym does become a third space.

The run club, whatever exercise-based group becomes a social outlet for people because there is not that, you know, going to the bar and going out with your coworkers.

In this conversation, Laura and I talk about why children's museums are one of the most radical equity spaces in our communities and why most of us have never thought of them that way.

We talk about what it looks like when families reclaim third spaces and about what the pandemic revealed about how deeply we need to be in the world together.

And we talk about what's happening right now across the country, in Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois, and places beyond, as two-generation strategies are finding new urgency and new language in a time of disruption.

I wanted to start with Laura's origin story.

it's amazing and like you know and there's so much talk about for good reason for excellent reason about isolation and loneliness among not just individuals but families like families being sort of cut off from traditional social supports and which means that there's not chances to learn about what other families are doing what do parents do in similar situations how do you how do you handle this stuff when you don't have a lot of time with others, and to counteract that, we need the places to do it, and you really helped to shine a light on how powerful an option children's museums are to play that role.

Kids' lives are more constrained than they used to be, by safety concerns, by resource limitations, by over-scheduled days, and of course by screens.

and the third spaces families used to share are quietly disappearing.

Laura has been thinking hard about what that means and what COVID, of all things, taught us about some of the answers.