third spaces + communities
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Sep 15, 2022 06:21 AM
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May 1, 2025 01:08 AM
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third spaceCommunity powered learning The art of gatheringSocial media platforms and online communities vs cities and urbanismIn 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 thereâs 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 âVirtualâ means something is like something else in both essence and effect, and thatâs not true in the âvirtualâ world apparentlyâ. He continues on saying âWhen 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 donât know your neighbours, you will be suspicious. And if you are suspicious, you will act accordingly. You donât get neighbourly on that basis. If you spend time with people youâre not going to hate them, itâs just that simple.â
- Sure, but you can always do the same for the internet. Maybe the intended effects are different, but Iâm not sure how to counter-argue against his point.
- If third spaces âoffer up a safe place for us to show up at our worst when we need to, when weâre stressed or feeling worn down. Our only obligation is to show up, engage, and metaphorically kick our feet up with our friends and communityâor alone if itâs solitude weâre afterâ then isnât it enough reason for allowing the internet to be a form of third space too?
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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
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To read:
On third spaces: https://www.thethirdspace.xyz/about
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Community powered learning

Learners are able to learn together, even with or without an instructor, through experience, practice, conversation and reflection.
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The art of gathering
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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 quarterâs results is a meeting organized around process. What, they might ask, do you want to achieve from discussing the quarterâs 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 youâre 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 gatheringâs 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 donât know, and arenât committed to, your purpose. âWhen 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.â |
3. Where your gathering happens has a tremendous impact on the outcomes of the event. | âYou shouldâŚseek a setting that embodies the reason for your convening. When a place embodies an idea, it brings a personâs body and whole being into the experience, not only their minds.ââ
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 donât 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. Donât 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 gatheringâs purpose, and exercise it over people who signed up to be at your â the hostâs â mercy, but definitely didnât sign up to be at the mercy of your drunk uncle.â |
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. Donât open with logistics or end with thank yous. Lots of examples in the link.
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Pregame is everything. âPrimeâ 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.
â90% of what makes a gathering successful is put in place beforehand.â 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. |
Itâs possible to design your gatherings so that they encourage people to bring out their authentic selves. | ă
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Too many events fizzle out rather ending with a bang but there are simple ways to end gatherings well. | âClose with a closing,â she says. She tells us never to start a meeting with logistics and we shouldnât 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 theyâve received from the gathering. Itâs about connecting our gatherings back to our daily lives. How can a piece of the event stay with attendees?
Parker states: âPart of preparing guests for reentry is helping them find a thread to connect the world of the gathering to the world outside.â |
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Social media platforms and online communities vs cities and urbanism
Thus, infrastructure design requires a more subtle approach:Â creating the right incentives, environments, and dependencies to encourage well-being while preserving user autonomy. That autonomy is crucial â 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 thereâs a distinction between the platform and content. Content is user-generated, so the designers only have control over the platform infracstructure. You canât 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.
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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 âsubredditsâ, on everything from fashion advice to memes to relationship drama.
Anyone can sign up to Reddit and participate. Itâs up to each subredditâs moderators to set rules and policies for the subreddit users.
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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 Jacobsâ most well-known contributions to urbanism is the concept of âeyes on the street.â 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. Jacobsâ âeyes on the streetâ concept leverages humansâ 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 â âeyes on the feed,â 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 Iâm in favor of an even higher-touch approach. For new subscribers, consider a pop-up welcome slideshow and ânew userâ 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 isnât 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 â for example, when public art becomes pollution?
Itâs something that I donât think weâve solved on social media platforms. Sure, we can âboycottâ a platform but how do we utilise and gather a large percentage of users of the platform? Similar to a city, itâs HUGE. Unless weâre able to cause inconvenience to a social media platform (like protests blocking a major road), then itâs 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.