Rocket Bomber - article - business - urban studies - A return to the Great Good Place.

[blockquote]

“As long as there have been cities, these are the kind of places people have met in,” said Don Mitchell, a professor of urban geography at Syracuse University and the author of “The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.” “Whether they have been private property, public property or something in between,” he said, “taking up space is a way to claim a right to be, a right to be visible, to say, ‘We’re part of the city too.’ ”

from the same:
“Climate controlled public places where the elderly, cost-conscious and indigent are welcome to spend a few hours are hard to find.”
(In the absence of big box bookstores, our homeless have to flee to McDonald’s like refugees from some conflict?)

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The need for a “Third Place” predates the term, but it was first (and best) articulated by Prof. Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, which I first encountered in a 1997 reprint edition back when my professional focus was on bars, pubs and hospitality — not my later (starting ~2001) career as a bookseller. What do really great pubs and bookstores have in common? (besides me?) These business often engender a Sense of Community, of belonging—and often, a sense of ownership—in their customers, a feeling that has nothing to do with the storefront or the economic activity. A stage where the props matter more than the script, and the cast constantly changes, but while on that stage everyone does in fact feel like they are part of an ensemble, a company. [sorry, that was perhaps a shade too poetic]

In the context of bookselling, I blogged about Third Places back in 2009. The internet has changed so much of our daily lives, and revolutionized social interaction (or at least, has claimed to change everything) but when it comes down to it: not a whole hell of a lot has really changed since 1989, when Prof. Oldenburg wrote his book. If anything, we still desperately need social space (now more than ever?) — a need so pressing that we will co-opt a fast food burger joint to serve the cause if necessary.

— but they have to have free wifi. Social is fine and all but the internet trumps everything.

Don Mitchell’s book, The Right to the City, is isbn 9781572308473; the isbn y’all should be popping into Google for Oldenburg is 9781569246818 — from there you can select your merchant-of-choice;

for the lazy you can avail yourselves of these Amazon links from which I will receive a remuneration.

[At the moment there isn’t an ebook version of The Great Good Place; I note a small, smug satisfaction in that fact given the subject matter but I decline further comment]