third spaces + communities

third space Community powered learning The art of gathering Social media platforms and online communities vs cities and urbanism In comparison to neighbourhoods

third space

The term, which was coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s, essentially refers to a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where a conversation is the primary activity.

Is the virtual world (social media) a form of a third space?

Third faces are face-to-face phenomena. Oldenburg argues that “Virtual” means something is like something else in both essence and effect, and that’s not true in the “virtual” world apparently”. He continues on saying “When you go to a third-place you essentially open yourself up to whoever is there. And they may be very different from you. If you don’t know your neighbours, you will be suspicious. And if you are suspicious, you will act accordingly. You don’t get neighbourly on that basis. If you spend time with people you’re not going to hate them, it’s just that simple.”

Sure, but you can always do the same for the internet. Maybe the intended effects are different, but I’m not sure how to counter-argue against his point.

If third spaces “offer up a safe place for us to show up at our worst when we need to, when we’re stressed or feeling worn down. Our only obligation is to show up, engage, and metaphorically kick our feet up with our friends and community—or alone if it’s solitude we’re after” then isn’t it enough reason for allowing the internet to be a form of third space too?

Do we even want more third spaces, or just the idea of them? Maybe what we need more is better social skills: https://midwesthetic.substack.com/p/third-space-you-cant-handle-a-third

To read:

https://www.pps.org/article/roldenburg

https://wellnesswisdom.substack.com/p/-wellness-wisdom-vol38-what-is-the?s=r

https://www.history.com/news/coffee-houses-revolutions

https://www.pps.org/article/how-to-nurture-flourishing-cultural-and-creative-hubs-lessons-from-the-netherlands

https://archive.curbed.com/2018/5/31/17414768/starbucks-third-place-bathroom-public

https://perfectdailygrind.com/2021/06/the-third-place/

On third spaces: https://www.thethirdspace.xyz/about

Community powered learning

https://twitter.com/CharlotCrowther/status/1587044569908232192

Learners are able to learn together, even with or without an instructor, through experience, practice, conversation and reflection.

The art of gathering

First summary, second summary, longer summary

Points	Description
1. Committing to a clear purpose for your gathering is the first step to making it great.	1. We need to be more intentional when organizing gatherings starting first with what is the purpose of the gatherings, who should be invited. 1. How to figure out the purpose of the event? See link. 2. For example: a meeting to discuss the quarter’s results is a meeting organized around process. What, they might ask, do you want to achieve from discussing the quarter’s results? To make a decision on new projects so that work on them can move forward? To align as a team? To clarify plans and next steps? To brainstorm a list of ideas? To produce something? Figuring out your desired outcome brings focus to a meeting. 3. Her tips: being assertive and taking some risks in defining a purpose. She also suggests asking yourself if your purpose is something that will make people think differently about the issue you’re addressing.
2. Being willing to exclude people is a key step toward building a meaningful gathering	1. Who not only fits but also helps fulfill the gathering’s purpose? 2. Who threatens the purpose? 3. Who, despite being irrelevant to the purpose, do you feel obliged to invite? Parker feels that overinclusion is a reflection that you don’t know, and aren’t committed to, your purpose. “When I talk about generous exclusion, I am speaking of ways of bounding a gathering that allows diversity in it to be heightened and sharpened, rather than diluted in a hodgepodge of people.”
3. Where your gathering happens has a tremendous impact on the outcomes of the event.	“You should…seek a setting that embodies the reason for your convening. When a place embodies an idea, it brings a person’s body and whole being into the experience, not only their minds.” Spaces embody the vibe we are going for in our gathering. The surroundings we choose for a meeting or party can make or break the mood, support or undermine our purpose, and encourage or discourage attendees to escape from their typical mindsets.
Gatherings are important to the human experience, but often we don’t give them much thought focusing on logistics rather than the interaction.	Rarely do we stop to think about the deeper purpose that lies behind our gathering, get under the skin of how people connect with one another and consider how to design gatherings in a way that encourages better human connections.
4. Don’t be a chill host. Hosts who act with authority are always better than hosts who are too relaxed.	What they fail to realize is that this pulling-back, far from purging a gathering of power, creates a vacuum that others can fill. Those others are likely to exercise power in a manner inconsistent with your gathering’s purpose, and exercise it over people who signed up to be at your — the host’s — mercy, but definitely didn’t sign up to be at the mercy of your drunk uncle.”
Having explicit rules for your event can be surprisingly liberating.	Set pop rules for the event even mentioning it on the invitation. Have a proper opening and closing. Don’t open with logistics or end with thank yous. Lots of examples in the link.
Pregame is everything. “Prime” your attendees before the event	Typically we think that events begin when they begin. Parker reminds us that events actually start long before: they are initiated in how guests are prepared for the gathering. “90% of what makes a gathering successful is put in place beforehand.” For example, you may take time to individually meet with stakeholders before a big meeting or maybe you send an inspiring article to the attendees of an upcoming dinner party. Whatever you do, resist the urge to start your gathering with logistics and, instead, launch in a way that sets the tone for the rest of your time together.
It’s possible to design your gatherings so that they encourage people to bring out their authentic selves.	ㅤ
Too many events fizzle out rather ending with a bang but there are simple ways to end gatherings well.	“Close with a closing,” she says. She tells us never to start a meeting with logistics and we shouldn’t close with them either. First, you can encourage the guests to make meaning and reflect on what happened. Second, you can have guests share how they are going to reenter the world with the new information they’ve received from the gathering. It’s about connecting our gatherings back to our daily lives. How can a piece of the event stay with attendees? Parker states: “Part of preparing guests for reentry is helping them find a thread to connect the world of the gathering to the world outside.”

https://medium.com/@jasminewsun/jane-jacobs-social-media-83b4265a1d12

Thus, infrastructure design requires a more subtle approach: creating the right incentives, environments, and dependencies to encourage well-being while preserving user autonomy. That autonomy is crucial — these spaces are only as good as the people who frequent them. As a caveat, the comparison to a city is most useful in analyzing group and cluster behavior rather than individuals.

Cities and social media platforms are similar in that there’s a distinction between the platform and content. Content is user-generated, so the designers only have control over the platform infracstructure. You can’t tell people what to do or not to do in the parks (you can have rules at most), nor can Twitter control what kind of discourse occurs on its platform.

Reddit provides user communities a relatively high level of autonomy in curating their rules, their feed, and their online identity. Remember the array of web forums that characterized the 2000s Internet experience? Reddit is like a hub for thousands of forums called ‘subreddits’, on everything from fashion advice to memes to relationship drama.

Anyone can sign up to Reddit and participate. It’s up to each subreddit’s moderators to set rules and policies for the subreddit users.

In comparison to neighbourhoods

The 2X debacle seems like classically petty Internet drama. But it also echoes urban debates over investment and gentrification. When neighborhoods that used to be relative havens for ethnic, religious, and gender/sexual minorities receive sudden attention from developers and culture critics, original residents are often displaced directly (through rising rents) or indirectly (through cultural erosion).

When there is big change to the platform, the platform should be more transparent to Reddit subreddit admins instead of implementing the big change and hear about their complaints later. Not only to Reddit shareholders, but the rest of the stakeholders too to show that they care about their users. Backlash may happen either way, so the platform must plan to respond to that, e.g. educate and other channels for dissent/disagreements.

One of Jane Jacobs’ most well-known contributions to urbanism is the concept of “eyes on the street.” She suggests that parts of cities which lie empty for several hours a day are more likely to become hotspots for bad behavior, while busy streets naturally discourage crime through the shopkeepers, residents, and walkers who watch the street. Thus, she encourages neighborhoods to foster vibrant sidewalk lives, with diverse storefronts such as apartments, cafes, and laundromats. These resources provide a street with the means of maintaining a constant stream of store staff and passers-by to monitor the surrounding area. Jacobs’ “eyes on the street” concept leverages humans’ situational awareness and norm-following nature to devise an informal, non-hierarchical citizen surveillance network. Rather than appointing designated watchdogs or sending the cops in for constant monitoring, all city inhabitants are empowered with a sense of common participation in community safety and governance. In fact, this monitoring is rarely conscious: instead, it results naturally from voluntary participation in public space.

But they also require strong community norms — “eyes on the feed,” one might call it. In a healthy online community, in-group peers conduct onboardings and call each other in for violating rules first. Pinned guidelines and FAQs help, but I’m in favor of an even higher-touch approach. For new subscribers, consider a pop-up welcome slideshow and “new user” tags to encourage older members to direct them toward relevant rules. Values such as helpfulness, kindness, and leadership can even be integrated into the reputation system, whether formally (e.g. Reddit karma, gold/silver coins) or informally (e.g. badges, tags, community awards).

If we can somehow ensure the parts of the internet are covered with people with a sense of community and good, then maybe active monitoring isn’t necessary. If the community has a high touch point to entry for new users, their values can be communicated and encouraged through onboarding calls.

Just as in real life, digital mobility is regulated by social norms and hierarchies such as race, gender, and age.

Just like how there are safe spaces on the internet and in real life, there are also users who are unsympathetic towards women or a minority, harassing them within the space.

From skateboarders zipping down steps to protesters who shut down streets, the users of public space have leveraged their numbers against official ordinances. Now we can ask: how can social media users establish their right to the platform? How can marginalized cultures insist on visibility when their visibility is mediated by black box algorithms? What happens when guerrilla urbanism makes spaces less safe — for example, when public art becomes pollution?

It’s something that I don’t think we’ve solved on social media platforms. Sure, we can “boycott” a platform but how do we utilise and gather a large percentage of users of the platform? Similar to a city, it’s HUGE. Unless we’re able to cause inconvenience to a social media platform (like protests blocking a major road), then it’s hard to protest on these platforms. Hashtags might help, but what else? And in physical cities, people can be voted out and retain laws and budgets in public view. There is concrete evidence that can be leveraged for or against reform. But platforms are private companies. We do not have access to them. We cannot escape the platforms but we can create or hop into the next best platform. Or continue to subject ourselves to the platforms.