Third Place vs. Right to the City
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2024
- Seems like everyone wants to talk about third place lately. Honestly, I don't really get it. Ray Oldenburg - the creator of the theory - was not progressive by most definitions and he built his theory off of strict masculinity rooted in misogyny and homophobia. I really don't like Ray Oldenburg and I'll show you exactly why in this video. And on top of that I'll give you something else to talk about - a more relevant theory called "The Right to the City," which is the idea that we control how the places we live change over time - not profit-seeking capitalists.
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Sources (in order of reference):
Ray Oldenburg - The Great Good Place, 1989 (Third edition: 1999): archive.org/details/greatgood...
Ray Oldenburg - Celebrating the Third Place, 2001 (unfortunately I cannot find a readily-available pdf online, I got the E-book for this video. But also you would be better served in avoiding this one, it's terrible)
Karl Marx - Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
Leopold Schwarzschild - The Red Prussian, 1947: archive.org/details/redprussi...
Erich Fromm - The Sane Society, 1956: historicalunderbelly.wordpres...
Henri Lefebvre - "The Right to the City" (1968) from Writings on Cities, 1996: theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...
David Harvey - "The Right to the City," 2008 newleftreview.org/issues/ii53...
Ray Oldenburg you have 24hrs to respond.
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😂
this video went so hard that Ray Oldenburg just died (in like 2022) 😭
lol the part where he says "ray oldenburg was showing his ass in the book" had me rolling!
⌚time's up Oldenburg
As someone who did a minor in urban studies (major in architecture) and slowly but surely evolved into socialist political ideology post-grad, hearing the attack against "third place" felt heretical - but then you did what you advised us to do - deliver instead an almost utopian yet realistic imagination of what to do instead. Massive kudos sir!
But it's a bit weird that he links the concept to the guy that came up with it and by disapproving of this guy he disapproved of the concept, even though the concept has grown and altered a lot since it's first conception
@@fatoeki I also would've liked for him to address what the term has come to mean in leftist spaces. However, as he says, most of our leftist appropriation of the term "third spaces" ends up being shifts in application that only tacitly shift the term's meaning. So it's kinda hard to analyze an evolved term that no one's defined (or redefined, in this case) and I understand why he wouldn't add such a goose chase to an already long video
I definitely understand that the subject and approach to this video was why 3rd space theory isn't all it's being cracked up to be/more effective alternative focuses. And I'm only about halfway through rn, but the quote at 27:42 just has me repeating "but that's just describing unfettered capitalism." I really at this point have been thinking that I would love to see, or I might just end up looking further into myself, but it really feels like an accurate diagnosis of the degradation of social spaces but is focusing on all the wrong reasons for the problems. It's the conservative tilt that derails and prevents positive movement. It would make sense why people online treat the surface level ideas as having legitimacy, but haven't looked farther into/ignored the awful elements. I would be interested in seeing someone properly revisiting the idea of 3rd spaces, though as I finish this, I may find it not so important with the rest that he has to say
@@fatoekithe idea that ideas have no material basis is itself capitalist bullshit. Marketplace of ideas?? You know the market is not free but is entirely regulated by the state with its monopoly on violence and every corporation is shit a government charter, an extension of its regulation. If you don't examine the material basis of ideas you're a brainless fascist
@@Shouja198all capitalism is 'unfettered'. When was sit good, when it created the trans Atlantic slave trade ? Or colonialism? Or Irish famine?
"Karl marx saying he would annihilate me would cure me of my depression, I would no longer be alienated" lmao
Plus in a bar over red wine after spending all day writing and reading. Wowwww
I'm a leftist and love biking to work, so started attending a local strong-towns meeting to advocate for biking in my city. I kept finding myself confused by the complete lack of imagination: is painting some lines on the road or getting rid of zoning restrictions going to fix our car addition? I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to notice the libertarian motivation at the heart of strong-towns.
Your videos have really helped me wrap my head around why the centrist approach to urban planning leaves me feeling so underwhelmed. This one is another banger.
thank you so much! incrementalism just won’t cut it if we want to end car dependence
@@radicalplanning Put government run canteens and stores, or even vending machines with people's daily needs into neighborhoods. That will cut/end car dependence pretty quick.
As a leftist I do like alot of what Strong Towns has to say, but you must remember what strong towns is, it is an organization founded by a Fiscal Conservative man Chuck Mahron that tries to have as much mass appeal to people all across the political spectrum as possible,so they are obviously going to avoid anything that comes across as too overly radical or alienating.
I can't be too mad at Chuck or anyone at Strong Towns, as they have gotten more normies to think about our cities in towns and like the CNU can be a gateway for people to reach more radical solutions.
@@linuxman7777 Also, mass government surveillance and media censorship to shield the government from any criticism, as well as extra taxes and fees for car ownership. That will cut/end car dependence pretty quick.
@@MK_ULTRA420 taking away cars from people isn't helping people, if you take the cars away and the only place available to get their daily needs is a Walmart on a stroad 5 MI away, you really did not help anyone. Walmart still gets the money, and you just made it harder/more expensive for normal people.
I'd guess that most people discussing third places right now have never heard of Ray Oldenburg, so I don't think his politics have anything to do with 21st century urbanists desires to avoid suburban alienation and to find places to experience community.
I attend the university at which he taught in the town in which he died. There is a room in the school library he and his friend built based on his book, and it changed my life. "The GGP" as my friends and I call it has basically saved my social life at this school.
I got curious. I did a writing project on him and how that room came to exist. In an interview, his friend described him as stubborn, a misogynist, pretty egostistical, and definitely into bars. He was probably pretty centrist, yeah. I was kind of disapointed tbh, being a communist. I haven't read his whole book, but my project encouraged me to get a copy. So far it does scream "I'm still a capitalist" and it's so frustrating.
It was a fun project. His friend was very kind and more on the left than the man himself likely was. I'm nonbinary and he was cool about that in our interview.
That room has still done so much for me. The man himself was kind of underwhelming to the point that its actually sad. He was disliked enough by the faculty that they didnt even do an announcement about his death like they do anyone else who once worked at the uni. The friend I interviewed found out about his death practically through the grapevine because no one told him when it happened.
I will say he had an epic garage, though. Stuck a door on the outside, turned it into a lounge, and proceeded to invite friends over twice a week to hang out and drink. COVID really messed the guy up.
Third places will not fix capitalism. It needs to be destroyed. But they are pretty cool and useful. The theory needs tempered a LOT. I hope to write on it in the future. I'm graduating with my degree in Anthropology this year and it would be a neat career-starter
TLDR: he lived a pretty sad end, he was in fact kind of a dick and probably a centrist. His theory is cool but not a fix-all.
thank you for sharing this with me
What a cool thing to do with a garage if you don't want to fill it full of cars!
damn you shared something so valuable, thank you for sharing and yay pride!!
I figure everyone needs third places and it's better if it's not all separate, so that we're not having to put up a fake being towards others, but that we learn to live with our differences and accept them as valid ways to be. Without seeing this as an attack on your own values.
Oldenburg was a man of his time (cold war era), burdened by his own personal issues, who had the intelligence to understand and explain the concept of 3rd place, but fail to see it beyond what was really familiar to him. There are still good concepts to use from his books, but yeah, it shouldn't be the only one we work with.
Yeah, I don't think we should fully dispose of any idea with origins outside the left. We can take it, play with it, and co-opt it.
Are you suggesting that reality is a complicated ever evolving soup of intentions, actions, and natural phenomena and that no single theory alone is sufficient to fully model the world or solve its problems?
That's not very radically online of you
I don't think any leftist believes that developers will "build us out of capitalism". The perspective is one of building out the imagination. When people are actually able to engage with some small benefit of people-centric urban development, they will be more capable of imagining an even more robust development. You ever have a conversation about building people-centric development with someone who is totally locked into the suburban lifestyle? It's not easy. Their entire perspective is warped by the environment they know. Change is viewed as a threat. Productive conversations are difficult to have in those circumstances.
Ya gotta meet people where they're at. Blasting their brain with Debord isn't generally going to get you very far when their entire concept of the urban environment is locked into capitalist modes of thinking. You've got to make some cracks to let some light in. The most surefire way to do that is through personal experience. You're not going to be able to build that experience without developers, in our current context. They kinda have a monopoly on these things. A monopoly backed by the state in key ways. Try setting up a coffee shop somewhere without a whole host of permits and other assorted bureaucratic paraphernalia and enjoy your visit from the police. It's an uphill battle and you're never going to build the kind of movement described by Harvey without something tangible to show people. "Look at this picture of Denmark." doesn't actually have much sway outside of lefty circles.
It's great to think bigger. I don't know of anyone who would say that building some bike lanes is the end goal. But an outright rejection of efforts to build out the public imagination is self defeating. Also kinda ignores the reality that we can do more than one thing at once. We can work with what we have and work towards something better. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Which people get access to that experience under the current system? You need power of some kind, which is not evenly distributed. The kind of transformation implied by RTC requires active participation of folks whose power over resources wouldn’t allow them that experience under status quo. Efforts along those lines under your gradualist approach would be possible but would require us to look for inspiration in experiments with resident control in public housing, which I believe the video is arguing would be benefitted by publicly accessible communications incorporating RTC as an ideological lens.
Honestly, that is pretty much why radicalization is... complicated. Any form of "education" can lead to extreme ways and views that never align with each other. Lesser results require lesser sacrifices. More results require more sacrifices. The entire issue with compromises is that, sadly, we are still animals. We are very far from being machines capable of perfect behavior and uniform taste, which is great, as it proves we are not artificial. However, even the idea of using names and labels (left vs right, anarchism, capitalism) is just... weird, in my humble opinion? We are too chaotic and organic. This is also why I agree that we shouldn't confuse symptoms with goals; investment in public transport and bike infrastructure is just a fruit of the circumstances; for those to even be allowed, let alone be used with enough frequency by enough people to justify them, is just proof that things ALREADY changed locally. In fact, symptoms and solutions could be the same thing! A "who came first, chicken or the egg" kind of situation.
As someone pointed out, Strong Towns has an agenda to push, but sincerely, who doesn't? And said agendas can barely fit political labels and spectrums because they are naturally individual; each person is unique.
That said, we DEFINITELY need better policies for a betterment of society. If it will be "anarchic" in nature or whatever. Will it be organic? Organized? Chaotically structured? I don't know...
"when their entire concept of the urban environment is locked into capitalist modes of thinking. "
Okay then, what would be the purpose of cities in a socialist society? Because the purpose of cities under capitalism is to maximize efficiency of access between between labor and capital. In your imagined world, cities would all be replaced with suburban bloc housing
(edit) which I'm not totally against; my early childhood home was a Mormon-owned apartment, so I've seen American dystopia at it's "finest".
There is a mistake in believing you can convince someone of working towards socialist goals without sharing socialist values
What I mean is: if someone is wholly unable to even picture developers as a problem, as a group of people whose interests are in conflict with everyone else's, then you are not focused on the right issue.
All of these fights must come from solidarity, which is born out of class consciousness. If the person you're talking to is unable to imagine things outside of capitalism, the work has to be done in changing that mindset FIRST, not in selling something that is easier for them to swallow. Watering down our goals for them to be more palatable to capitalists is only going to result in their corruption.
You cannot push for capitalist goals "socialistically", that's incrementalism, and has historically always failed, mostly because it opens the door to cooption and corruption. When you allow capitalists into your movement, don't be surprised to find out you're no longer in control of that movement quite quickly.
What we risk doing is focusing our limited resources as leftists towards the benefit of capitalist goals. It's like backing democrats because that's easier to sell: you don't get a socialist in power, you get a capitalist and a bunch of confused liberals wondering why you backed someone you seem to hate so much.
Lying about our goals to the people we're trying to convince is never a good idea; much better is to present our goals as the best alternative, which is not too hard because THEY ARE better. I get the desire to have a win, however small, NOW instead of 5-10 years down the line and after a lot of work to convert our comrades... but that's kinda the only way to get ACTUAL wins.
So yeah, in conclusion: if you find it hard to sell RTC because your interlocutor is too focused on capitalist mindsets, you should be trying to change that mindset first. You can't speedrun progress, and you definitely won't do it by compromising with people whose goals are diametrically opposed to ours
@@guitarlover1204 "What we risk doing is focusing our limited resources as leftists towards the benefit of capitalist goals."
After the fall of the USSR, that's all the left has been doing besides hosting race wars.
This has made me realise that my city's new library is critisised as being a big coffee shop with books on the wall, and visiting it made me wonder why the kids area is not separate from the rest of the library so sound carries and students and teenagers are loudly talking, which i attributed to the decline of parenting and public standards. Although now i realise its a community centre with the name library. Which isn't necessarily bad, and perhaps that's the way libraries have to move to get use out of it, its a very popular library compared to the old city library.
"students and teenagers are loudly talking, which i attributed to the decline of parenting and public standards."
Part and parcel of living in a progressive society.
Libraries are community centers and.librariams actively encourage people to interact with each other and talk these days. They have quiet areas for people.to go and study/ read but it is not an expectation generally.
"so sound carries and students and teenagers are loudly talking"
Wow, how great is it that kids and teenagers are hanging out in the library instead of out getting into trouble!
Kids having fun is a failure of parenting!!!! Kids should shut up and stop interacting!!!!! -> you
@@thastayapongsak4422it's a library my dude. There are certain ways folks ought to behave in certain spaces. Kids/teenagers being loud in a library excludes students, readers, folks doing research, and otherwise engaging in the primary purpose of a library.
I think the skatepark is a third place.
Great example!
100% agree. As a kid I skated my local university, lot's of kids did. I even made freinds there and have felt warm and fuzzy when i see those skate spots in videos. Skateboarding is life.
The mall too!
Big yep
@@aaronjohnson1763 how? when you go to the mall do you strike up conversations with random strangers and hang out in, where exactly? the mall doesn't fit the definition of a third place no matter how you look at it; in fact, it's the exact opposite. it's a place built by multibillion dollar developing companies meant for consumption, not community. I don't even know how you'd entertain the idea considering malls don't even feature locally owned stores, but chains of mega corporations.
Little bit of a self report if Roy had to sit with his own life and his own thoughts for about five minutes before concluding that doing so for an extended period would likely turn a man to the ways of homosexuality
"speaking of not-very-leftist..." midroll ad break. I lol'd.
I didn’t catch that it might be intentional at all, wow
This would also be a good lead-in to a sponsorship
I thought the same thing. For a video arguing against capitalism, there were in total 10 add breaks, showing me, in total, about 20 adds (for stuff I would never buy). It's a mad world we live in.
@@agnesmilewskiit’s almost like TH-cam leftists aren’t…. Sincere
@@BrandonMitchell10205 it's almost as if one needs to.. eat
don't mean to be snarky, and maybe fewer ads would work to feed his family, but i also have to give almost half of my waking hours to capitalism to vouch against it the other half
This brightened my day.
As a social worker / therapist constantly attempting to help people cope with the alienation that is clearly systemic, I greatly appreciate this analysis.
Karl Marx saying he was going to annihilate me would cure my depression too! Haha
right??? thank you!
Thanks for doing the work you do. Good therapy is inaccessible for so many people who desperately need it.
I do volunteer peer support. It can help a lot, but many people really need professional help.
I want to start with saying that I really appreciate you teaching me about the Right to the City. I agree that it's an extremely helpful movement to rally behind.
However:
The Right always appropriates words from the Left, such as the word Libertarian. Why can't we appropriate the word 3rd Space?
Sure, Oldenburg had some cringe beliefs, but i think everyone from all backgrounds is feeling alienated, and I don't see a problem with rallying behind 3rd Spaces. Most people who are into 3rd Spaces don't share his weird views on women.
Like you said, there's power in a unified name. Lets *use* the unified name that people from all walks of life are *already using.* We can hijack and appropriate the movement with suggestions on how to *actually achieve it.*
One of the major reasons that Leftists don't achieve their goals is purity politics; like you said yourself, this channel isn't meant to reach anyone outside of the Left. You don't want to use a useful word because of some beliefs that the creator has were bad. You don't want to inject yourself into the 3rd Space movement because some people are Centrists. That just seems like you're shooting yourself in the foot.
We need to be present in the spaces of other groups that are *so close* to understanding the real issue, but we'd rather just tell them they're wrong and then isolate ourselves.
We should be an influence on others. We can inject the ideology of "the Right to the City" into 3rd Space movements.
my thoughts exactly !!!!!
Wow, it's like you didn't listen to any of the theory at all and are just going off of vibes
"I will work with anyone to do the right thing. I won't work with anyone to do the wrong thing. "
Reverend Doctor King
When we talk about 3rd spaces today - we specifically talk about spaces with low or no entry-bars and all are welcome. This includes modern community-center-esque libraries, nature-parks, city-plazas and squares where you can just sit on a bench - it even includes places like public laundromats, where people stay for the whole duration of laundry, and can be used to host events. Same with a skate-park, a metro-station, a waterfront, anything. We are against physically barring spaces, hostile architecture and wealth-segregated gathering spaces.
A dive bar or a bowling alley is a "conditional 3rd space" - aka - dependent on a narrow activity or financial transaction. That is not the goal. The goal is "unconditional" 3rd spaces which go beyond that and seamlessly fit into people's lives.
So what you're saying is kind of like saying "why rally behind socialism when the idea of unionization and co-op workplaces is right there?" Like, yes, that's part of it, but the video was explaining why it can't be the solution. The solution to capital owning the world isn't "more unions", it is the abolition of the power of capital in the first place. A more broad and utopian goal, but that's what the video was addressing - the long term, broad goal, as well as the problematic history of the Third Place Theory.
First of all: great video.
I have two things to add: one is that the concept of "the right to the city" doesn't do a very good job of clarify at what level of society decisions about investments should be made. For example, you said in your video "if there's not enough housing in a given neighborhood, we build public housing there. If a given neighborhood needs more bike lanes, we build more bike lanes." But a lot of that information is very detail-oriented. It's the kind of thing that makes more sense to talk about at a city council meeting than in the halls of Congress.
The concept also doesn't do a good enough job of explaining how cities get access to the "surplus." Normally the answer to this for socialists is simple, by taking various industries under state control, and planning investment. But at the level of the city it's less clear. Would the money for these projects be coming from a central government and then individual cities get to decide what to do with that money? Would cities themselves take local businesses under public control and reinvest their surpluses? Would this be paid for through taxation?
Personally I believe that the only way for a Right to the City to work is for it to be truly local in nature and a big part of the reason it hasn't happened is because we've been trapped for too long in a false choice between neoliberal capitalism, and top-down central planning. What we need is a form of planning that vests more power in local communities to make decisions for themselves. Conscious, active decisions, not profit-oriented ones, but still autonomous ones.
Second: I think one of the problems with Third places is that the emphasis is on building coffee shops or community centers, and isn't on building a complete cohesive community that surrounds them.
When I was in college I had such a deep sense of community, why? Because my friends lived within a five minute walk of me, because we were united by our age group, because people studying the same thing shared classes together, because people in the same wing of a dorm had to use the same communal bathroom (on my floor it was men and women alike too, which I think brought us closer together gender-wise) and because the R.A.s were tasked with regularly hosting events to bring people together.
Many intentional communities have a similar cohesive all-in-one approach to things.
I think that in order for Urbanization to truly fight alienation it's not enough to make places more walkable, or build more third places, etc. we need to start thinking of every aspect of a neighborhood in unison. People shouldn't just live in individual houses and individually commute to individual coffee shops for their sense of community. They should live in real communities.
The unit needs to change. Right now we make decisions at the level of an entire city through government or at the level of individual houses through development. What we need is to make the unit a given neighborhood.
The Coffee Shop, the walkability, the shared interests and values need to be all a part of a package deal.
The best way to do this would be to invest significantly in the creation of new Intentional Communities (here using a broad definition of Intentional Community that doesn't always have to mean the most crunchy-granola form of it.)
I'm still fairly new to exploring these kinds of concepts, and am very invested in learning more about utopian thinking. Where I keep getting stuck is all these big ideas, when communicated to me by believers, leave so much of the interim out of the HOW we get there from here. And I think it's in part because really each of these individual ideas need to be worked in unison with a grander vision. They can't work on their own because they still have to exist within a system that will ultimately beat them out. Which leaves me feeling overwhelmed and beaten because that feels like it can only come from a violent revolution, or at least a complete collapse of the current system, both of which necessarily mean many would have to die in explicitly horrible ways.
Like you say, how is a city's surplus taken in, how is it determined how its redistributed, and how do we remove the ability of capital to influence how the people choose to spend that surplus when capital would still exist unless the whole world was united under one idea. The people are still corruptable because they still have their own inherent interests at heart. They can't become collectivised easily, especially when for the first few decades of any such thing, there might not be a tangible benefit for many because the original foundation of the city still exists in all its unequal and inhuman splendor.
Here you discuss the idea of community and I think it ties into our current modern day concept of Family as atomised units and the leftist (queer) ideas of abolishing the family. Which again, I think there is huge merit in, but HOW do you get there without enforcement, and who is enforcing it? It's difficult to envision without it always leading to totalitarianism or tiny community lead forces which open the doors to many things not based in fairness but suspicion and hatred. The original problems feel like they still exist unless humanity as a whole is reprogrammed by years of "re-education".
(sorry if this is an incoherent rambling mess that doesn't really address your comment)
I don't think a simple old-fashioned "farm-style" communal living will solve that.
That kind of a society quickly creates majoritarianism and social hierarchies within and individual liberties are lost to reactionary thinking. Basically, imagine 50 people live together and threaten to alienate the one gay person. Why even in many leftist "communes" in 1960s inevitably lead to male leaders sexually assaulting women, and women keeping quiet because they did not want the community to alienate them for speaking out.
The goal is to find a balance, where find a sense of community, but also be secure in our individual rights and liberties from the threat of majoritarian alienation or other forms of social pressures. Also, the goal of socialization along shared hobbies and interests, and not just physical next-door neighbours, with whom you can have nothing in common, or worse, who can be toxic and harmful to you.
Currently, it seems like a choice between (freedom/security + loneliness/alienation) or (community + reactionary bigotry/social hierarchy). The goal is (freedom/security + community). I don't have an answer but having Third Spaces (broader definition, not bars) where you are free to come, but also free to leave anytime and go home is a good starting point.
@@Parivertis I feel the same trouble - a premonition that the lack of clarity on how we move towards a better collective future leads to the worst possible way of not even necessarily moving towards that future. In more specific terms, in the same way that there is no going back to the traditional city form without the necessary historical conditions, there is also no going back to a theoretically unalienated state of being without a complete overhaul of its environs. It follows that the so-called neoliberal subject and its self-interests is not to be denied and enforced. Not to mention that enforcement already suggests a higher authority, whose power comes from unjust and murky sources. But one thought to follow: whilst it is difficult to create voluntary collectivism within the broader state or even the family (think the natural fact that parents are older and more powerful than children), these might altogether be the wrong scales. If we return to the root of creating right to the city, which I take as the ability to first make and second reinvest surplus, the enterprise or company ought to be the scale at which such collectivist efforts start. Companies are the vehicle of profiteering and reinvestment, in other words the smallest sum of people to make a meaningful impact on city operations. And, imagining a collectively run company (think 100 people against 1 company) alleviates the pressure of imagining a collectively run state (think 10million people against every decision within the state). From there we begin to scale the problem by thinking free associations and alternatives to representative democracy, which is still a massive undertaking but at least thinkable. To be clear this still presupposes and crucially depends on the existence of the market, as well as assuming that the marketplace is not the source of all evil, which at least for me sits very comfortably with theory.
Saying you cant zone a third place into existence but calling for better zoning isnt necessarily a contradiction. Just because zoning isnt sufficient for a third place doesn't mean zoning isnt necessary.
I'm pretty sure he said pretty much that exact thing. I don't remember when , but he basically said changes to zoning are necessary, but not sufficient.
The question should be about priorities given limited resources. Better zoning principles are obviously, literally, better - but it is fair to ask if you are getting efficient returns on if you are putting your time and energy into arguing from that angle. I think they made a fair case that its a poor leverage point and that there are more useful frameworks that can be used.
My third place was a magic the gathering store that supported competitive events. It was only a 5 minute drive from my house. It has closed down because of the death of the owner and now the next closest thing is 45 minutes away :(
I'm sorry that your local spot closed. MTG/tabletop game stores are awesome!
My four sons were fortunate enough to have MTG/gaming stores in all the towns we lived in. They've really been a positive force for our family. My oldest got his first job at the local MTG spot. The guy who helped us hang drywall after a fire was a friend from the game store. When we moved and the boys needed a new social circle - we found the nearest game shop. Though they're adults now, they still play MTG on Zoom with their father.
I was spoiled in the late '90s and early 2000s by an abundance of comic shops and local game stores acting as readily available non-alcoholic third places. My friend group and I were left largely adrift when those places went out of business (due to owners' personal crisis, not lack of sales volume). My wife and I now travel to conventions every month or two so we can briefly experience our third places. It's a costly and unreliable alternative, but the best available in a post-brick and mortar specialty retailer era of capitalism.
I used to play 40k at a tabletop store that had a ton of room for people to play tabletop games, MTG, pen and paper RPGs. it was great and I made a bunch of friends there. They made most of their money from some LAN rooms in the back. they were 1 section of a 3 part building and as businesses left they ended up taking over all 3 sections. the problem was that the owner didnt "realize" that he needed to pay taxes for charging for the LAN PC usage since he wasn't selling a product (news flash, you have to pay taxes on services) and the IRS audited him and he owed so much he had to sell off all the PCs and most of their stock cheap. closed down 2 sections of the building and went back to their original tiny store. I went there once and they had barely anything to buy and no room to play. They went under very quickly after that. Miss that place. My partner and I have the careers we work in because of a friend I made there recommended me for a job and I later recommended my partner and I'm still friends with a bunch of the people I met there 15ish years ago.
Ray Oldenburg has a point about segregation. what's the point of desegregation if there are not places where people meet and intermingle with each other and practice actual desegregation. Ultimately desegregation wasn't that successful because people didn't have third places they'd meet at and get to know a bit about each other... this hints at all the downstream problems associated with not knowing each other.
Yeah, maybe there's some part in the book that wasn't mentioned where he says that actually desegregation is bad, but the quoted bit felt more like he was saying, "How effective is desegregation if the only time we're around people of other races is when we're required to be in the workplace or school?"
But even if he was a racist, or a homophobe, or a sexist ... that doesn't mean the idea of third places is inherently wrong. Like, if someone advocates for Universal Basic Income because they hate welfare, it doesn't mean UBI is bad, just that they're weird. A while back I was watching some videos on Stoicism and some of the criticisms were that those ancient Greeks and Romans had some bad opinions about women and ... yes, they did. Fortunately, we're not required to follow the parts of their philosophy that don't work, any more than we're required to think that making more potential "third places" where the community can gather will reduce homosexuality.
I'm so glad to have found this video, I didn't know anything about Ray Oldenburg - and I'm excited to learn more about radical planning! That being said, I think "third places" as a phrase and concept that's basically divorced from Oldenburg IS helping to move the needle/provide language for people to see whats missing in their life, so I don't find it to be a problematic phase on its own, and it's probably here to stay. Now it's a matter of expanding imagination beyond that, as you said.
First of all, I disagree that we can't build on Oldenburg's ideas. He doesn't have ownership over a concept, the same way Darwin doesn't have ownership over the theory of evolution. I don't have to endorse Oldenburg's politics to explore ideas that he suggested. For example, he's totally wrong about everything he says concerning gender; does that invalidate what he says about the need for socialization?
Second, you can take the idea of a third place into account when planning your city. Places that have space for people to sit and talk without the pressure of spending money will be more inviting and could potentially become someone's third place. You can prioritize certain kinds of businesses, like bars and restaurants, or make more parks or walkable spaces. Nothing guarantees that it will become THE spot for your city, but it can only do a city good to have options.
You articulated vague misgivings I had about urbanism beautifully. Thank you
Very cool video. I do think the term third place will stick around and continue to be quite divorced form what Oldenburg was trying to restrict it to. At this point a third place in common parlance just means a place that is not for the purpose of working, or domestic, and rather it is a place for leisure and socializing. Which is why it surprised me that churches or places of worship are not actually included by his original definition. I just assumed that a third place is any public space where it is possible to bump into a stranger or acquaintance, weather you are passing through it, or staying a while. The public square or street, the public park, libraries certainly, and places of worship, all of these that are no cost to enter or "low" to enter such as cafes and bars.
That was my running definition of third places too, but I’ve only heard the term used by TH-camrs and never in it’s original context. Very cool to learn about
I just casually thought of a third place as a place where people can congregate. Maybe i should use a different term.... congregation station 🤷♂️
places of religious or spiritual significance came up in my mind as well, especially when all the examples of "good places" given were centered around alchohol, coffee, or food of some kind. something many people might not be able to afford and many others might just not want to be around for one reason or another.
Churches are not included because third space activists are all leftists who hate the concept of organized religion and traditional spirituality. It's really as simple as that. Of course they don't realize that tearing down churches or trying to make people stop going to them is just removing what they would call a third place, but because it's part of "the old order" it's bad and needs to be removed.
Not specifically defending the omission/exclusion of houses of worship from Oldenburg’s definition*, but I do think that a house of worship doesn’t have the “low cost” for entry or for lingering that a public library, community center, or even many bars & cafes do. Depending on the denomination, the specific building, and the local congregation and community, there is a varying pressure to share the faith of the house of worship.
IME, it’s never absent, but is sometimes very slight and subtle. In some places, it is an explicit and near-absolute prerequisite. So the “cost” isn’t “buy at least one drink” or “be with a group at least some of whom are buying drinks”, it’s “[profess to] join the faith”. That can be a much lower or much higher cost. And either way, is exclusionary to some degree-even if it doesn’t bar entry, it will prevent feeling at ease and like one truly belongs there, which sorta undermines the value of a third place.
Though, ironically, makes houses of worship fit Oldenburg’s idea even better, since he appears to have felt that the “right kind” of exclusionary was a prerequisite to a good third place.
* from what I’ve gathered from this video, houses of worship meet Oldenburg’s definition, and given his apparent biases towards particular traditional social structures, their omission seems like either an inconsistency in his theory or a weird blindspot on his part. Only thing I can think of is that as largely ungendered spaces, he felt that they didn’t give men, specifically, a haven-that houses of worship are too egalitarian and therefore too “feminized”.
An interesting perspective here. I feel like you overly discount the value of incremental change and broadening appeal. If you want to build a movement it takes a thousand small steps unless you're ready to annihilate all people that disagree with you there's always going to be some compromise or outreach needed. So showing up to city council meetings, even if the gov't and economic systems aren't your perfect utopia are still important. People need to see the changes happening. The Netherlands can get safe streets and bike infra built because step by step people have been fighting for it for the last 50 years and seen its benefits, it didn't happen overnight nor all across the country at once.
I have frequently referred to bars as the "last vestige of human interaction." I've never heard of "third places" and while I consider myself a leftist I've never read anything really by Karl Marx. I think all humans in general desire a place where they can stratify into their own groups without pressure but I don't think these spaces should ever be segregated and in fact a good (good as in with inclusion) pub (or other third place) could re-enable societal interactions where discussions of politics and policies could be conducted once again... without the heavy influence of algorithms. In fact I think a lot of these social media algorithms take advantage of this very idea of a third place. It groups you together then prays on divisiveness in order to drive engagement.
It is so strange hearing ideas that I've had in my head for decades come from these people that you're mentioning. I'm really glad that you do what you do and I hope you keep doing it.
Now to the library to read some of these books that you've mentioned!
yo dawg your playlists are sick
i used to be homeless, and my third place was in front of a chevron gas station. all the homeless in the area would congregate every night and we would sit around and be homeless people. thats the only time ive encountered a third place and and i dont think people in their right mind would hang out like jay and silent bob in front of a bodega
Wow this is your best video yet. Im inspired to bring some of these ideas to my local urbanism group that Im involved in.
Ray Oldenburg is a really freaky little guy, isn't he? A real odious character.
One reservation I have (which you touched on) is that local people are rarely incentivised to encourage more development/housing being built in their area - that's one of the main reasons NIMBYism is so popular. People get attached to how things are at the present (likely want made them want to move to that area), and are nervous about allowing too many new developments to be built. I would be curious to learn more about that.
thank you! and yes- nimbyism can be deadly. I do think a lot of people just fear the loss of what limited stability they have in this world.
@@radicalplanning Or they fear the loss of any open space, since development often takes place in parts of the city already zoned residential with multi-unit buildings. I've seen a lot of YIMBYs propose super density in places they don't live... YIYBYs?
I think that there's some validity to NIMBYism fearing being "Taxed" out of the neighborhood that they love and grew up in. High density developments mean higher property tax.
Thank you for bringing the idea of Right to the City to my attention.
While I can only truly speak for myself, if I can truly speak for anyone, I suspect a lot of leftists assume "the Right to the City" even if, like me, they've never heard the term. It's a mortar that connects a bunch of otherwise desperate leftist ideas. It has to be in place for those ideas to form a coherent worldview, but it's hard to communicate without actually having words to describe it or a way to label it.
Unfortunately, the same mortar can used to fill the gaps of other ideas, making them appear more leftist than they actually are. I think that's why so many leftists consume new urbanist content. If you already assume "the Right to the City" and watch videos that doesn't openly contradict it, those videos also appear leftist.
That's such a perfect explanation of why I bought into Third Places without thinking about it at all
Wow, im disappointed that i never saw the obvious problems with urban planning youtube. This showed up in my reccs with about 500 views, so i was kinda skeptical that the video would be any good. This video and this channel are a breath of fresh air.
thanks! the algorithm does not like me
Agree. The whole “Urban Planning TH-cam problem” by NthReview video criticising Urbanist TH-cam fell flat. It should have covered the topic in the way this video does - from a left’s perspective with actual depth and nuance.
@@atavanH You mean the video encouraging people to actually engage with the urban planning process?
Holy shit finally a planning TH-camr who isn't a left lib! I'm going to binge watch everything you have, and develop my opinion upon your politics but, even if I disagree with you, your voice is supremely valuable. Workers of he world unite!
capitalism is good
@@mrosskneActually, Capitalism bad.
@@mrossknesure if you’re part of the ruling class, which given the circumstances seems unlikely they’d be leaving TH-cam comments.
Think better for yourself
@@l00tur nope I'm better than you
@@mrossknesmall brain thinking. 🤔
Love the way you highlight the false dichotomy present under the current system: hand over our limited power to developers or fight back against any improvements that may exacerbate gentrification and inequality. It sums up so well the two dominant perspectives present in my city at this moment in time. I think I’m starting to grasp the alternative you outlined with the Right to the City, but will need another watch to get it fully. Urbanist TH-cam has been very effective at getting me interested in city planning and whatnot, but it’s frustrating that the clearer I see the complexity of the problems, the harder it is to find any solutions compelling.
Great job, this is some thought provoking stuff!
Found you! I guess i dont need to ask if watched this video yet 😂
i see third places all the time being created by teenagers. a lot of kids hanging out whereever theres a huge piece of glass in front of which they can practice dance moves. usually metro stations with big spaces inside them. or outside some big business buildings. also they dont have to spend a lot of money in order to stay all the time they want to.
those spaces where not built for hanging out but anyway kids appropiate them as a third place.
There was a TV show depiction of this kind of thing happening that I came across while watching the Hulu show 'Superstore'
A bunch of teenagers came and hung out in what was pretty much a Walmart bc it had enough room.
Disagree with your critique but agree with your conclusion. I think you hit the nail on the head when you emphasize democratization of the surplus: my main problem with a lot of socialist rhetoric (and I say this as a socialist) is that it really doesn't seem to emphasize democracy very much, just opposition to moneyed interest. Reframing urbanism from "pro development" to "pro democracy" is a good step.
From the very beginning it’s interesting that the definition of a third place I had heard of was different from Oldenburgs. I had heard them described as a place you can go to other than work or home where you are not expected to or do not need to spend money. From that definition bars actually don’t qualify.
I’ve seen it as a location you can go to get a break from capitalism. Socializing was a frequent but not mandatory component. For example public parks and libraries were common examples under the definition I heard.
Yeah, in fact, "paid" third-spaces are low-quality 3rd spaces. When we talk about 3rd spaces, they are spaces where you can "hang out" for an indefinite time without being dependent on any activity or purchase. This can include public parks, waterfronts, plazas etc. There can be small $1 street food like hot-dogs, ice-cream or taco trucks - nothing too fancy. Similarly, spaces like public libraries where you can spend time in, without having to pay like cafes. And in some places like London, museums are free or host frequent "free nights" where everyone is welcome. Same with larger food-courts, open-air farmer's markets etc. - where you can stroll and spend time in without the pressure of it being around large purchases or specific activities.
Anything revolving around a specific narrow activity or financial transaction is a "conditional 3rd space". If the condition is not met, it collapses. That is not the goal.
I would argue that the theory of third places has change. A third place is now defined as a place outside your home or work and it's main goal is not for a person to buy things. In this definition, third places are community driven areas that promote togetherness not conversations. For example, libraries whether you are talking about the stucture or the puapose, are third places because the goal is not to buy and it is outisde your home and office. Furthermore, libraries offer a sense of togetherness because people are working towards the goal of you i.e. studying. I would also aruge that a library should have multiple purpsoes but this is beaides my main point. When you look at third places in this light, then you can notice a change in third places. I would argue this change in third places started with the decrease in religiousnes and the move to privatized community building.
One of the main third palces that the majority of the population went to on a regular basis was their local relgious building. This allowed a sense of togetherness and did create a area for conversation. However, two things contribute to the decreasing use of relgious buildings; the decrease numbers of people who do not identify as religious and the splintering of religious groups into smaller and more extreme groups. While religious beliefs are decreasing, there has not been a gathering place for those who are not religious. This makes a loss in their sense of togetherness which adds to feeling of less third places. There are some alternatives to relgious buildings like humanist centers. However, these alternatives are still very rare and not that well known yet. Now, the splintering of relgious groups have made it harder for those in different relgious groups to find a sense of togetherness between themselves. Furthermore, splintering cuases smaller groups to occur which makes a smaller sense of togetherness. However, I would argue that an increase of extreme views and polarization can help increase togetherness for their intergroup identity while decreasing their outgroup identity.
After WWII, there has been a move to privatize a lot of community goods and there has been a move towards larger mega corporations versus local businesses. Local business can building a sense of togetherness as opposed to large mage corporations because they are entrench into the community. However, for the purposes of third places, I would not consider them as a third place because the purpose of most businesses is to make money. Yet, local businesses contribute to the sense of togetherness which in turn does impact the feeling of the loss of third places. Regardless, it can be seen that the need to privatize life has negatively impacted third places. For example, the amount of community centers have been decreasing. The purposes of the community centers have been taken over by other businesses like the gym, YMCAs, yoga studios, etc. These businesses take value from the community center whcih in turn politicans argue that community center has no purpose if other businesses are doing the same thing. Other than community centers, there are plenty of communtiy goods that have been decreasing in later years. For example, the amoutnof public pools have been decreasing due to systemic racism. Before abolishment of segregation, public pools was seen as a necessity of the public. However, when segregation eneded many public pools shut down because they did not want to integrate. This cause the move from a public pool area to private ownership of pools. Furthermore, laws were pass to get rid of public pool citing that people wanted to own their pool more than to go to a public pool. This also moved pools from being completely paid by the community to having to charge people to use it. Even when a community good charges money, most of the time these communtiy goods purpose is not to make money.
All in all, the theory of third places has change. I am not sure if the academic literature has updated but academia is usually behind the current public conversation.
Nowadays, at least American city libraries are not just for books and quiet places to study. With a library card in many library systems, one can access a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music albums, and digital copies of movies. Basically skipping that trap of having to stream content on a subscription. For the more well-funded libraries, there are additional services like makers' workshops and quiet recording rooms
Planning can't create a third place, but it is still absolutely crucial because certain places/conditions are required for someplace to have a chance of becoming a third place.
A lot of the lliberals (different thing from neoliberal) and reform socialists who promote better urbanism are talking about changing zoning and planning so that third places can develop organically... Not creating them from the top down. That's sort of "changing rules so what we think is better is more likely to come about on its own" thing is pretty much our main thing ;)
I really appreciate this analysis in general, and in particular for pointing out the mysoginistic and homophobic roots of third place theory. It really puts a spin on the concept that needs to be considered and accounted for when trying to modernize the idea and apply it to the current day in any way. In fact I think the vast majority of the analysis is really interesting and should give anyone who hears it a lot to think about.
However I think you start to brush up against the limits of theory at 47:02 where you talk about the notion that "if an area needs a thing we just build it". To anyone reading this, try and come up with an actual workable system that would allow us to do that, and build it out in your head a bit. First off we are inherently talking about local government because we want these decisions to be made by the people involved. We would likely have to form some kind of governmental body (probably with elected leaders) to oversee decision making and review proposals/requests from local communities to decide what the priority to develop first is. Maybe we make maps where we create "zones" intended to block out generally undesirable building patterns like the classic idea of putting a factory next to housing. Then we need to figure out who will do the actual construction, and until we are properly post-capitalist that probably means a private construction company. Construction is very expensive and pretty disruptive to the local population so we would likely limit the amount that could happen at once which would probably lead to some projects deemed "low priority" to sit in the que for quite a while. And just like that we have recreated the system we have now almost 1 for 1 just with leftists' sitting on the city council instead of centrists. For the record that would be a good thing, but we can do that right now by voting.
That's not to say this is the only way of doing things and there's no hope for change, but I feel like our critiques end at "what's wrong" without understanding why things are the way they are beyond vaguely gesturing at "captalism". We all know capatalism is omnipresent but the important part is understanding how it interacts with other social forces and it seems sometimes we substitute understanding its interactions with thinking its the only force in play. I've noticed a lot of truly great lefty video essays end with a short "so what should we do about it" section that often amounts to the sentiment "we should stop doing bad things and do good things instead". This really worries me because I cant help but see it as our inability to take honest-to-god insightful critique and lay it on top of the current system in a productive manner.
I don't mean to imply that you Mr. Content Creator should be tasked with creating a whole theoretical new political system for your youtube video and you have failed if you don't. This is valuable critique and should be respected for what it is. I just worry when i dont see the other half of the puzzle almost anywhere in the movement.
Hello! New to your content. I'm a socialist who has gotten into the whole Strong Towns thing, and recently started a Strong Towns local conversation in my city. I recognize that Chuck is pretty centrist in his views, and his critiques lack a progressive understanding of the world. I guess what I'm confused by is why we have to reject everything a centrist, like Chuck Marohn or Ray Oldenburg because we don't like some (or even most) aspects of their philosophies.
Strong Towns for example, as that's the work I'm most familiar with, is primarily critiquing how we have warped our development of cities around the car, how that has driven down housing density making costs per capita skyrocket, and how we develop large areas of the city to a finished state taking on more debt and maintenance costs than the city can actually handle. I don't think these are bad or inaccurate critiques, the only issue is Chuck's belief in market forces to correct these. But Strong Towns also isn't a do-nothing ideology, a huge part of the Strong Towns model is people coming together to discuss issues in their city and doing something about it. There are other ways of correcting these issues that Chuck would disagree with, which is fine because I don't care what Chuck would or wouldn't agree with. I want to take his good ideas, discard the bad ones, and mix them with other good approaches, such as Right to the City, which I have learned about through this video, so thank you!
I hope I'm not missing something here. Ever since the start of my Strong Towns journey a few months ago, I've been on the lookout for ways to take the Strong Towns ideas in a more economically and socially progressive direction. The fact that his work almost never touches racism when discussing the history of development, nor gentrification in his prescriptions on the way forward is a glaring omission that I hope to address in my local conversation.
My question to you is, why do you feel the need to re-define Strong Towns? Strong Towns, by all definitions is a market strategy. It creates a "grassroots" movement of people by obfuscating the true nature of capitalist markets. Even if you want to believe that Strong Towns is possible without the market (which reduces the entire theory to simple aesthetics) most people who push Strong Towns rhetoric will not agree with you.
What I don't understand, and what I tried to express in my video, is why so many leftists are unwilling to learn about leftist approaches to cities and suburbs. There is no shortage of critiques, theories, and approaches for socialist urban planning and yet many leftists still gravitate towards neoliberal solutions. I blame this on the rhetorical element of Strong Towns. They are a literal propaganda machine - they know how to build an audience.
In adopting right wing theories and attempting to make them fit into a socialist program, you're more likely to be pulled to the right than you are to pull the theory to the left. Instead of engaging with the ideas of literal republicans, shouldn't you focus on the ideas of thinkers who aren't entirely opposed to socialism?
@@radicalplanning I guess I can't fault Strong Towns for being good at getting their message across and pitching their ideas in an appealing way. As you say, not many leftists are presenting leftist approaches to urban planning. The ones that do aren't doing so in a grassroots "here's what you can do right now, here's where you can get support to do it" way, but in either an incredibly academic theoretical way (which has value but doesn't do much to actually get a movement started), or in a vague "this is why we need revolution" way.
I think another issue is that the name of socialism, or other left-wing ideas, is still poisoned in this country. Nationally, it's seeing more popularity, but at a local level, where politics are almost exclusively engaged in by gen X and older, is still a boogeyman. I don't agree with Chuck's insistence on being non-partisan broadly. But if my goal of making my city more cycling and pedestrian friendly will be hampered because my insistence of socialism will scare off my neighbor from that goal before I can even explain why it's a good idea, then I don't see a way forward.
I don't actually know if I'm correct in this approach or not. It's just that while I believe in socialist ideals, leftists broadly are terrible at implementing ideas in a pragmatic way. I live in a place where most people don't want socialism, so I have to do something that can appeal to more liberal and centrist minded people as well, because they live in my city too. After years of engaging in online politics, I decided I wanted to actually do something IRL and being the most interested in public transit and reducing car dependency, Strong Towns is the only thing I could find that actually provided me with the tools to do something.
@@jakefromkc8739 Its a question of priorities. Do you want to improve the city that you live in? If yes, then the Strong Towns model is the way to do it. If you want to promote socialist ideas in the hope that future generations will find solutions to today's problems then do that.
@@jakefromkc8739 I think it's not just that leftists are terrible at implementing, but we have been thwarted many times by very powerful forces. but I do agree that discussion on specific strategies is often lacking, and the messaging can be bad.
Never heard of the guy or the book until this video and my opinion about my perception of what third places are (which includes public spaces, libraries, parks, etc…) hasn’t changed just because it doesn’t fit the definition of a guy I’ve never heard of.
Well his argument is
a) this guy is the father of that idea
b) the idea hasn't evolved since this guy put it forward
I think you make a fair point about the changing meaning and connotations of words. But the video is making some wider points than just 'don't say third place' -
1) Building cafes/bars by itself isn't really a good solution to the problems that urbanists are trying to solve.
2) More broadly than that - how is the use of space is decided? This video argues that it needs to be weighted towards community control, rather than central government or real estate developers.
@@chazdomingo475 yes, and the counter argument is, if someone's heard of the idea but hasn't heard of the guy or the sexist/racist connotations originally attached to the idea, then the idea has in fact evolved since he put it forward.
and it shouldn't, because this video doesn't actually attempt to do that. the video attempts to show how the claim that third places can solve alienation is unlikely to work.
I was thinking about this a lot recently but didn’t have the right words to articulate my thoughts. It would be awesome to have the power to control urban dev. I think I bristle when hearing “third place” because it’s just a reminder for me of how the current world is not designed for humans but for wage slaves being distracted through consumption and profit motive, and it just gave me the yuck.
As someone who feels alienated when around other people, the ‘third places’ I’ve found for myself are up random mountain trails and watery crags. It’d be cool if more people could have places in the city that give them this feel and space.
Thank you for your work on this video. It was super interesting to learn the history behind this theory and the concept of “right to the city”. Psyched to checkout more of you content. 🤘🏽❣️
I feel like you may have misrepresented Oldenburg somewhat, the comment on segregation appears to be more in line with his theory of third places and integration. I didn’t get a sense he was commenting on an ideal model of democratic participation.
I hadn’t engaged critically with the idea of third spaces, and was honestly a little annoyed that someone was calling it out. I’m not sure why I decided to watch this video, but I’m really glad I did. Thank you for challenging my ideology and giving me a chance to learn.
Ditto.
So question for you. I do think using money as a proxy for ability to lead/decide on the topic of urban development/land development (ie, having developers decide what to build and where) is imperfect for sure, but I'm struggling to see what you put forward as an alternative. Your commentary on the subject is fair, often insightful, but I'm finishing this video without feeling like I've learned an alternative way to approach this problem.
We need some way to facilitate the decision-making that goes into property development. If profit motives were eliminated, do you suppose that local "developers" would be motivated to build the spaces necessary, risking their own capital, out of some other desire (a desire to build community or serve their neighbors maybe)? Or would the capital raising and decision-making be more collective: communities pooling funds (via government or other means) to then build the spaces that that community needs? In the latter case, do we intentionally keep the scale small so as to reduce the friction which exponentially increases with scale in democratic decision-making? What about larger scale projects (like transit connectivity between neighborhoods)?
Like I said, there's a lot to appreciate in your video, but I'm not feeling any more equipped to tackle this issue for watching it than I was before.
Same here, I got the feeling there was a nudge nudge wink wink implication here but I'm obviously not versed enough in the discourse to get it.
Because he doesn’t offer any solutions, only complaints. There is nothing wrong with the profit motive in real estate, almost all the problems we have now are not a result of developers paying politicians off. It’s because politicians don’t let developers build anything. These idiots criticize the profit motive as getting us into this mess when the shortage of housing is 99% caused by zoning and urban growth boundaries. The shortages experienced are not organic market shortages or failures, tens of millions of homes could be produced and sold for a profit bringing down the cost of housing because housing costs are much higher than production costs in so many areas. If one does not believe dramatically increasing the housing stock would bring down the cost of housing, they can be written off as economically illiterate because they have zero proof for their claims. And the damage they cause is unbelievable. Look up the paper called “Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share: Accumulation or Scarcity?” And it talks about how these restrictions on the production of housing has greatly hindered the economy because of the unneeded amount of capital getting sucked up by the real estate industry each year due to artificially shortages causing high prices. And it’s basically the number one cause in the increasing wealth inequality since the 1970s.
13:43 puts up a quote from Oldenburg making a banger of a point and then proceeds to make a completely unrelated conclusion without even referencing said quote. Don't let your brains drip out of your ears watching this essayist
The actual description of 3rd places had me picturing The Drunken Clam from Family Guy
I don't think showing that Ray Oldenburg sucks* necessarily debunks the idea or importance of third places-- However, it remains true that Oldenburg sucks. A lot of urbanist TH-camrs have aimed to legitimize the concept of third places by specific appeal to Oldenburg and his book & theory, and yet they clearly didn't read all the book. That's my impression, anyway, from having watched several of them in the last year or so. The Oldenburg theory/framework has a lot of baggage which needs to be worked through carefully. So that's a serious omission on other TH-camrs' part, and it's fair game to call it out.
Now, maybe we can question how much it matters that Oldenburg sucks. Maybe your video overstates the case here. But the first step is recognizing that Oldenburg sucks. The earlier videos by others did not recognize this, and your video does. So your video has moved the conversation forward in an important way. Thanks for the video!
*("Oldenburg sucks" is my oversimplified shorthand for the longer set of more nuanced criticisms that you made over the course of the video)
I think you’re valid in seeing some inherent value in the concept, but I guess I just don’t see the necessity in adapting it to a leftist framework. I’m ok with the term as a way to categorize things but not so much as a platform of struggle. Anyway thank you for a fair critique of my critique!
@@radicalplanningI agree with you. Even crediting Oldenburg with uniquely valuable insights is conceding too much. The only reason more people have heard about "third place theory" than about "the right to the city" is not because the former spontaneously won more market share in the divinely ordained "marketplace of ideas" due to inherently greater merit, but only because bourgeois class domination ensures the recuperation of substantive observations about alienation - something dating back to Marx - into safer, fundamentally depoliticizing forms.
Can someone explain this to me? The video says that because we can't guarantee a given development will become a third place, there's not much point in trying to advocate this sort of development. But this seems to overlook the basic idea that there's a statistical effect. We can't guarantee that a given patient receiving healthcare will save them from death, but there's still a statistical value to providing the service. We can't guarantee that lead paint will have a deleterious effect on the health of a given person. We can't guarantee that creating places for bands to play in your town will bring a crowd for them. Social engineering is plainly about building up or reducing human tendencies by encouragement or discouragement, never resulting in a guarantee that this encouragement will take hold. But should we therefore not encourage people to socialize and form relevant community bonds? I feel silly asking this because clearly this video was made by someone with more knowledge of the subject than myself, but I fail to understand how this logic is supposed to work.
that is a point made in passing within the first 4 minutes of the video lmao, the video is about third place theory in general being flawed, not about how to make them
@@incitedoubt5375 And? Everything I said stands regardless.
Fantastic video thank you! In particular, the point about the homophobia and misogyny built into Oldenburg's 3rd space theory strikes me as insanely under discussed in most urbanist spaces. Because it really reminds me of how Gamergate types talk about video games, particularly online video games. They are male dominated spaces that hit just about every criteria. Admittedly, one can debate the conversational focus and it can vary from game to game but lots of conversation happens within these and I'm struck by how pool halls seem analogous. And the reaction to women in these games and the rampant homophobia in many gamer circles sounds almost word-for-word like Oldenburg's complaints on those subjects.
I also think that naming the "Right to the City" is a vital point here. Having a ideal to push for that's independent of YIMBY/NIMBY debates is so important. And I just come back to the fundamental problem being the commodification of land. On the one hand is the individual plot owner whose incentives are to limit access to and really even replication of valuable (in the exchange-value sense of the word) built environments in order to "build generational wealth". A form of capturing investment returns via rent-seeking political restrictions. On the other is the developer (here must be understood as the owner not the workers employed by the developer) who seeks the same end but via the means of large scale production of market transactions and taking from volume rather than margin. 50 units giving a developer $1000/unit/year profit versus 1 unit giving $10,000/year profit for the NIMBY. They are separate strategies that utilize advantages each capitalist has. The NIMBY having local numbers advantages and the developer existing capital to deploy and skill extracting surplus value from employees. And without a focus on ultimately destroying the cycle of capital accumulation, any movement simply reduces itself to one of these two options.
The one thing I may somewhat caution against is too much focus on simply staying in place. People living dynamic lives where they move and remake themselves is as valuable as those who stay in place and seek stability. The key though is to not FORCE one of these through economic coercion. If I move across the country to try a new place to live, it should be welcomed BUT not forced by lack of income options or rising prices. I may decide to move from Atlanta to Seattle for a new job, but not because my old job was insufficiently compensated but because I want to try a new form of work or new level of challenge. Or maybe I just get sick of 90% humidity with 90 degree weather. Meanwhile the person with deep roots who views their home as the perfect place for them forever should have that while not facing rent or taxes rising to kick them out. And a lot of that conflict does either go away or at least reduces if people aren't compelled to leave and if the home isn't a vehicle for making windfall profits off each other.
I was spoiled in the late '90s and early 2000s by an abundance of comic shops and local game stores acting as readily available non-alcoholic third places. My friend group and I were left largely adrift when those places went out of business (due to owners' personal crisis, not lack of sales volume). My wife and I now travel to conventions every month or two so we can briefly experience our third places. It's a costly and unreliable alternative, but the best available in a post-brick and mortar specialty retailer era of capitalism.
Came for the video title, stayed for your immaculate drip.
I cannot even imagine the amount of work you have put into this video, And you have only 6,000 subscribers? Please keep up the work and trust that the views will follow, I was watching this and just assumed you had a million subscribers based on the quality of your production and research and writing. Please know that all of your hard work, ALL of your hard work (long days and late nights) are appreciated, and noticed. Keep up the good work, I'm so excited to catch up on your back catalog, And I'll be looking out for your next video!
thank you so much!!!
I’m so happy to find your channel! You really speak to my questions/hesitations I have with online urbanism and what I encounter as a journalist who writes about housing. I just finished my graduate thesis on solidarity in journalism which used a case study of housing coverage and I cited Harvey’s concept of dispossession at the suggestion of my advisor but I’ve been eager to read more. Thank you for the reading list! I just sent this video to my advisor and a bunch of friends. As a journalist who writes on housing and homelessness and wants to use solidarity and dignity as values in my work, I think the right to the city is central to how I think urban issues need to be framed - as part of a shared environment and social fabric.
Great vid! I would love to see a video on tenants unions which also feel really under discussed in a lot of youtube urbanism. I almost never comment on videos but I really love this channel, this is my offering to the algorithm.
thank you! and id like to make that video too someday!
I just wanna say, this is one of the best video essays I've ever seen!!! I've always consumed them but have always found them lacking in something I couldn't quite put my finger on. I now realize what is missing is the careful discussion of texts that usually does happen in written form. I have seen many video essays on third places but have always found funny how no one seems to mention David Harvey (loml). Thank you for this discussion and congratulations on creating this, I'm honestly astonished.
"i dont want to be rewarded, i want to be right" huge mood
Your content kicks ass my dude. I've been blazing through your videos all week. it is deeply refreshing to see not only a professional and expert, but also a critical and radical professional make content based on their field, with such nuance as separating out theory and practice, discussing specific works, chapters and passages... God knows the internet needs more academically rigorous content, which breaks down academic walls to knowledge for people like me. keep doing ya thing
Edit: Posted this comment just before i got to the "Fuck you, Ray Oldenberg". this is real social science now, baby
Ahh, more people processing and thinking through original sources so I don't have to. (Seriously though, I've been thinking about this lately, on one hand THANK YOU obviously but on the other it's unfortunate how we lean so hard on specific people to understand stuff that we should probably work through ourselves. Actually, I suppose the totally uncritical use of third place theory as a buzzword-y thing is entirely due to that)
I've thought a lot about this video over the past few days. you've raised some really good points but I can't agree with all of your conclusions. You are right to highlight Oldenburg’s misogyny and homophobia, and how those biases have impacted his theory and analysis. But I think you are wrong to reject third place as a topic of discussion.
Firstly though, I want to address something I think you are completely wrong about; libraries. I think your definition of a library unnecessarily narrow. The function of a library is not to provide a studious, quiet environment. This is a requirement for an academic library or a reference library, but there are other types of library. The thing that all libraries have in common is they provide the user access to a collection of published media, usually, but not exclusively, books. From there you get academic, reference, local studies, audio visual, children’s etc. I think to disregard these other types of library (especially describing a children’s library as a "play area") is patronising. I also disagree that a library functioning as a community centre is a failing under neoliberal austerity. I think this assumes the narrow view stated above of what a library is. In reality I think libraries acting as social and community spaces is a natural evolution of a community institution run on egalitarian terms. A place where books are freely available is a natural place for a book group to meet, a place with free study space is a natural place for study groups to meet, and any place which has regulars that come daily (or at least every week) and stay for a while has the potential to develop into a third space. Libraries are under threat from austerity, but in the form of closures, reduction in services, reduction in floor space etc. Also, In a socialist future (particularly of the more anarchist flavour) I think these rigid distinctions between the functions of different spaces would become more diffuse, not less, and that the world would be better for it.
Regarding the main argument, I think you are right and wrong. You are right that more third places wouldn’t on their own solve capitalist alienation, but I do think the loss of third place is one of the mechanisms through which alienation increases. I also believe that third places are vital to building a movement that is capable of ending capitalism (and as a result, actually dealing with alienation).
Historically these places have been vital for revolutionary movements, Oldenburg may have given examples of bourgeois revolutions, but they have been just as important to other more liberatory movements. Historically the labour movement had labour clubs, working men’s clubs, union halls, workers welfare centres. In the anarchist workers movement in Spain there were the Atenios (which often included meeting rooms, a library, a theatre, café). In terms of the civil rights movement, those churches were vital, not as organisations that sent letters like you suggest he meant, but as meeting places where relationships of trust could be developed. Those relationships are the foundation of a movement.
I also think about some of the anarchist social centres I have visited, that would host a free meal once a week. Much like a traditional third place this would have regulars, occasional visitors, newcomers. Alongside the food (which acted as a draw and social lubricant) conversation was the main activity. While more temporally limited I still think this fits the third place definition quite well.
We can and should create spaces that serve our movement and community, including spaces that we hope might develop into a third place. Despite and against capitalism and the state where necessary.
All of that said, I do also have some issues with Oldenburg’s conception of Third Place. You are absolutely right to highlight his misogynistic, homophobic and capitalist world view, and how these assumptions have affected his theory and analysis.
His ranking of third place as after the home and the workplace shows a definite commitment to capitalism and the nuclear family, which I am fundamentally opposed to. So I don’t actually like the name “third place”.
I also think his second criteria needs some extra defining. The criteria is that a third place should be a leveler, i.e. that people from different social classes or circumstances should be able to interact on equal terms. I think this only works within the social group that the place exists to serve (take for example the working men’s clubs I mentioned earlier, if a rich factory owner were to enter the space they would obviously not be able to interact on equal terms). This highlights how such places are not inherently liberatory; a wealthy private members club might also serve as a third place, but obviously serves to reinforce existing power structures.
It is also worth noting that under capitalism what may be a third place for one person, is the private property of another, and the workplace of another.
I think Third Place is an interesting and useful concept that Oldenburg wasn’t able to explore the full potential of due to his own bigotries and capitalist world view. We shouldn’t let his limitations also limit us.
Whether or not some reactionary dbag coined the phrase "Third Place," it's crept into the lexicon regardless. The complaint I most often run into most often, from myself included, is the sense that a lot of the things we used to do or enjoy at earlier periods of our lives are gone forever with no real equivalent because they failed (because of capitalism) or because capitalists decided they were obsolete. So not only do you have the so called "third places" disappearing, but the existential dread of "the world I was a young person in no longer exists." This video sums it up perfectly IMHO: th-cam.com/video/uH5PM9o0hrE/w-d-xo.html
13:49 as a black person yeah I kinda agree with Oldenburg on this point tbh I don't see what's wrong with that specific take
Also for the rest of his opinions it's really really funny to just read them as repressed homosexuality bro was a boy kisser fr ong on jah
I think you really underestimate the way the term "third place" has breached into the mainstream. I've heard my normie, non-urbanist friends bring it up. Linguistic prescriptivism is fine in niche academic contexts, but once a term breaches into the mainstream, it takes on a life of its own.
My other gripe with the video is that you use "centrist" as a pejorative when describing third place theory. It comes across as very dogmatic especially when terms like sexist, not providing solutions, or blinded by nostalgia would be more accurate while also not implying that we shouldn't adopt any theory not written by a leftist.
"The right to the city" sounds great when you describe effects, but you never address the practical issues of it. How do decisions actually get made? How does investment actually get allocated? How are a diverse set of perspectives represented and considered, but spoilers prevented from derailing the process and creating stagnation? Who pays for it? How?
The closest thing I've seen in practice to "the right to the city" was when I lived in Berkeley, California, and that process ended up with empty lots sitting vacant for 7 + years while people fought about what to do with them, and legal bills mounted. It was bad for literally everyone involved. I'll assume that was just a very poor implementation of the principles, but if that's true then what does a good implementation look like at a nuts and bolts level?
Your comment & questions are right on the money. He makes a great observation: "When people idolize the cities of the past while ignoring the conditions that created those cities, they're being nostalgic." Then he basically ignores this when it comes to The Right to the City, flippantly mentioning things like building rail projects etc. as if 1) there are not huge costs associated with those, 2) the majority of rail transit systems just magically sprang into existence through the will of the people (most, even NYC's MTA trains, were originally built as privately-owned, for-profit enterprises), and 3) cities/urban areas don't exist because of or aren't/weren't built to support exploitive capitalist projects.
The idea of The Right to the City, as explained in the video, is based on the idea of the people controlling the profits; the profits of what? Because therein lies the rub; capitalism isn't the problem here (well, it is, but it isn't...) - the problem is a system predicated on consumerism, ie unsustainable eternal growth. It doesn't matter if a factory cranking out useless plastic parts is owned by a capitalist or if "the means of production" are owned by the workers - the fact that the factory exists at all is the problem. David Graeber's book "Bullsh*t Jobs" gets to the heart of the matter - the majority of jobs, the majority of businesses, the majority of everything that supports modern society is totally BS and, on the whole, harmful to society and the planet.
The thing is, you take all that away, and what do you have? Mass chaos and a need to rethink everything - the entire system collapses; it sets society back 700 years. Degrowth. Which, on the whole, isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, in the reality of the here and now, would be absolutely horrible for the majority of the world's population.
What's the solution? I don't know. Probably just continue along, close to status wuo, with (hopefully) incremental improvements. But I think people really need to ask the questions you've posed and analyze things from a broader perspective.
Oldenburg is American, pedestrian conversation dominated places are all but unheard of in the US.
It is possible to bear in mind the importance of creating opportunities for third places without designating them as such.
Bus stops in shopping precincts are often prone to vandalism. Designed as welcoming pedestrian recovery areas with shelter from wind and rain, psychological distancing from traffic, a sense of tranquility, the use of chequerboard table tops and seats with back rests, good welcoming lighting and high visibility from passing traffic, piped Classical movement, can be provided to encourage lingering and conversation.
Libraries (the institutions) often provide a quiet environment for studying, and lend or making available books and other stores of information, and provide comfortable spaces for conversation, and courses, and printers, and research help.
Not all libraries perform all of these functions, but your definition of the function of a library is not exempt from that. There are many libraries without quiet spaces.
All of these functions work towards a broader goal of the public library: to make more accessible the creation and consumption of information.
This is only a criticism of your (imho) underselling of libraries, not your argument that they are not necessarily third spaces.
or the argument of your video as a whole, which I think is good and has given me a lot to think about.
I would love to learn more applicable ways to turn theory into action - I am currently in arts administration graduate program and I have been trying to research how art nights/craft circles and the arts can help build community and connection - I had been researching third place theory as the goal of my programming is social interaction and inclusive spaces - yet now I am learning that is not the foundational interests of the theory. How can I continue to use my background and knowledge of the visual arts as a way to help my local community? To increase equity, accessibility, and inclusion? I already work hard to share and research resources for artists, individual grants, and support for underserved backgrounds in the arts. But through programming of arts events and activities how can I continue to do what I can in the skillset I can have to improve my community? That is my ongoing question
One of the third places in my city (Fresno) is the climbing gym. Both bouldering and wall climbing is a great way to have organic conversations if done right. At our gym people are generally very friendly and will cheer you on if you are climbing something and happy to offer guidance if you want it. I've been to climbing gyms all over the place and in other countries and for the most part they are similar. You can boulder alone if you want, but it is very easy to strike up a conversation and get to know new people without coming off as creepy or just wanting to hit on someone. It is really great!
I actually want to open a community center/gym in the old streetcar suburb (which means it is pretty walkable) with a climbing area. It's funny, but when I moved here 6 years ago I never thought I would stay, but the community I have found here has been such a wonderful surprise that it has kept me sticking around.
This was interesting food for thought! I loved what you brought up about alienation from decision-making and the kind of learned helplessness we have around that. Of course, that phenomenon makes community co-design more challenging to achieve, as NIMBYs are sometimes the only people who show up and offer input. So many US cities and towns are in such a chokehold by NIMBYs that decisions like zoning changes and affordable housing have to made by the state government, who can afford to piss off a few homeowners. I do think most people in any given city support things like affordable housing, public transit, etc., but they're just not always organized and vocal. NIMBYs stay motivated by the fear that any change will lower the value of their home, which is their equity.
I'm a bit confused though by your solutions section near the end, where you say, "If there's nowhere for the community to hang out, we can build coffee shops, bars, and community centers" considering you earlier seemed to be arguing that zoning changes would just be deregulation and a handout to developers. Where would those places be built then? Who would build them? I don't think the government is going to build us coffee shops and bars any time soon, no matter how many letters I write them.
Hopefully no one believes that changing zoning codes to allow for mixed-use is going to somehow end capitalism, seeing as how there are many such walkable/liveable cities in the world, and they're all still capitalist. But I don't think we should stray into thinking that just because a solution doesn't fix everything, it's worthless. Lessening car dependence would lift a huge financial burden from people. Planting street trees slows traffic and can save people's lives. Third places can make it easier for people to hang out with their friends. Even if those things don't challenge capitalism itself, they're still worth it to do IMO. We can make life better for people now while also working towards a long-term vision of more fundamental change.
I have a hypothesis that if you go to a place that people frequently pass through/visit whenever you have spare time and get to know anyone visiting in those times, letting them know you'll be there often, a community will form around you.
The issue I have with third places is that it’s not clear how exactly this “place” is supposed to facilitate connection. I think Oldenburg’s vision explains why that issue occurs; He had envisioned a space where people with an incredibly specific subjectivity would congregate, and connect automatically based on that shared subjectivity. Actual facilitation of connection does not need to be addressed, so the theory doesn’t address it. The theory thus ends up being inapplicable to a modern society, where people are far more diverse. At least, that’s my perspective.
I don't think Oldenburg's book has a monopoly on what third place means. Urbanist youtubers talking about third places does not mean that those youtubers agree with every idea Oldenburg had. Urbanist youtubers using his terminology differently than him aren't "incorrect." Words change meaning! It's incredibly obvious that most people talking about third places today believed that they should be sex-integrated, and appealing to all social classes, even though Oldenburg didn't believe that.
I might even go far as to say Oldenburg is completely irrelevant to the modern understanding of third places. I know I never heard of him until now.
It's absurd to imply that the idea "It's good for towns to have places existing mainly for conversation and community building" is inherently flawed just because a guy who coined a catchy term for it was a dumbass.
Very interesting work! In Brazil, if you're discussing urbanism it is almost always going to be through the lens of the right to the city theory, so I never looked much into third place theory besides what I saw on american/european urbanist youtube. Thanks for the time and effort you put into this!
fantastic video! i just got through 5 years of architecture school and not once was Ray Oldenburg's intense misogyny or racism mentioned. Long live the city!
Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed it. I'm an urban planning undergrad right now working on a capstone group project about how people relate to (redeveloped/gentrified) leisure spaces, originally intended to be about specifically 3rd places. You helped give some basis to my poorly realized discomfort with the term and how people talk about it.
Many of my less materialist friends, fellow majors and non-majors, bring up the "lack of 3rd places" as a major problem in our modern cities. It always felt like a strange thing to focus on to me-and kinda sophomoric. Like you talked about, if you want a 3rd place find one! We should work to improve our cities, not sit around nostalgic about what they were.
Thank you for talking about 3rd places as things that are collectively evolved in ways outside the control of individuals, something that belongs to a community, rather than an individual. There definitely is a tendency from a lot of urbanists to center their own perspective (“where is my ideal 3rd place and how can I make it?”), that is imo antithetical to the ethos of the field.
I can't speak for others, but I kind of accidentally reinvented (?), for lack of a better term, third places in the sense that I noticed that we're all isolated because we only interact with people when we're at work/school or the odd membership places like gyms or church/temple/synagogue/mosque. As it is, I needed a place that catered to people with similar hobbies to mine so I could make friends when I graduated and I didn't have anything in common with my coworkers outside of the workplace.
The hard part is making friends in the first place without some sort of meeting space where you can meet like-minded individuals, but after that is done, you don't need a "third place" to talk to them since you can hang out at your own home with them or in theirs or even go to the library or park.
coffee shops and bars are about spending $$$. we need to do better than that
Oldenburg was socially conservative, and his ideas were just that, ideas, albeit constructed through his lens. I think the concept of Third Places isn't necessarily wrong or a dangerous habit of mind when decoupled from the Author. I see it as a thought problem that makes people think, and reconsider their relationship with infrastructure. Right to the City is no different. It's a concept for making you think, but focused on solutions.
Also... Is everyone unironically thinking developers are gonna solve the problem?? Was that happening??
I've subscribed, excited to see what else is coming.
I don’t think you are being fair to other leftists. Right is subjective. Maybe other leftists value moving the needle in the right direction rather than being right all the time and getting no where at all.
I agree with many of RP points but I don’t agree with the rigidity and the overly critical tone. This video is great and we need people like you voicing your opinions. I love hearing them even if I disagree with some of the points and the tone.
Can one say they are a leftist if the needle doesn’t move at all? I agree we need some strict adherence leftists.
I disagree with some of Ray O’s ideas but I suspect even he would disagree with some of them now. Humans are changing. His ideas were controversial and arguably left wing or right wing in many aspects for the time period he wrote them in depending upon the issue and argument.
Most people in America aren’t actually centrists or left or right. It’s an issue by issue basis in which they are left/right/center in actuality. Beyond that political affiliation is cultural more than anything else.
I do feel like there is a big contradiction here where you say the theory hasn't been expanded on and then say that when TH-camrs and others try to expand on it, that it then breaks the definitions of the original theory. So you've created a situation where you can't expand on it and if you do, it's not valid because reasons? You point to the tension inherent in pointing to someone as the authroity on the subject but then contradicting them, but like, if a theory originates with one person or one document-- which is often the case-- then you're kind of forced into reckoning with its creator? You do add the caveat that people need to be able to explain why they are making changes to it, but then you don't go into any examples of why you feel no one has substantiated their proposed changes in a satisfying way. It's genuinely unclear what changes you would accept to this theory as being worthy of your approval (for lack of a better phrasing).
I know that is all at the start of the video, but then maybe you shouldn't be touching on that at the start of the video if you don't have the room for it at that point. Perhaps it shouldn't be alluded to at all since you are truly aiming the video at Ray moreso than other people. I don't know. Feels like an odd way to start the video and makes me pretty sus of other conclusions you are going to make when it feels like you made a really large leap right out of the gate.
"A Third Place" strongly suggests that we only get one and I reject that notion. Rather, I think that we can reimagine third space as bring places where we come together with like minded people to do things of mutual interest. I have a group of buddies who play chess and a different group who likes board games and yet another one that likes cars, etc. Each of these groups and the spaces we pursue our association qualifies as a third place in every desirable sense of the word. I'd hate to try to wrench on an old hot rod next to some friends having a friendly chess match so the idea makes sense to me.
Murray Bookchin mention in the end lets goooooooo
I have to say I initially read your assertion that Ray was misogynistic throughout the book as hyperbolic and an unfair interpretation of the norms of a different generation. I'm so glad you immediately directly quoted the words that man wrote down and published for the world to read, because my jaw hit the floor. I'm a guy, and it makes me sad that so many men have to walk around with thoughts like that in their heads, and that they're so disappointed they can't share their self defeating worldview without them being looked at critically. Oh. My. God. Obviously the oppression of other people is reason enough to oppose that worldview, but the way Ray frames it does an excellent job of highlighting how it harms the men who try to impose it "on others" but hurt themselves in the effort. Sad
Yeah, I feel so bad for assuming you exaggerated. This is nauseating 🫤
How does any leftist read this book without mentioning all of this garbage?
I would argue that, while it is often technically zoning laws that block developers, the developer's main antagonist is really landlords and other landowners who want artificial scarcity, with the state being more of a third party that both sides are trying to sway to their camp. It's capital vs. capital, not capital vs. the state. And I generally prefer the productive capital over the rent-seeking capital.
It's weird in therapy, they seem to do this exercise where they ask you to imagine your perfect day and then they tell you to think of ways you can achieve it within your means and what makes that day perfect and I think it's supposed to exercise your ability to have a positive mindset or something (correct me if I'm wrong please). But I think we need more of that in leftist thinking, we need more imaginative, creative, hopeful stuff, at least running in the background to keep our intentions in check
I think the real problem why many feel isolated in cities is that there are barely any places nowadays where you don't have to consume anything or buy anything and everything has to be cool and marketable .I only really noticed that when I moved from a big city to a small town .I don't need all the third places the city had to offer really, but instead some actual friends and family that care about me are enough. In the city Im mostly had ''friends'' that I only spent time with when we where at a bar or restaurant , but never at home or in nature. Every part of my social life felt so intertwined with having to go out and spending money, where as now we just meetup at home, at campus, in nature . I also have been able to save a lot of money this way.
My only critique is the gate keeping of a language, if the people utilize the term in a way that is different from its definition, then the definition will be adjusted in time.
e.g. Goblin Mode is a Word
e.g. Democrats vs Republicans c1964
e.g. Most women being removed from most records due to "great man" domination
Strength in unification under a better term is a good argument.
A little long winded but nicely thorough, you've successfully updated my ideas on third space theory! And while I know perscriptivist calls to action are hard and "identifying with the right to the city" is a lovely step one I find myself missing a step two short of illegalism, which as an anarchist I think of as effective but dangerously self sacrificial. I guess I'm stuck in the spot that a lot of right to the city action is Very hard to execute. improving abandoned buildings can feel futile when you know developers will claim your work for their own and sell it for profit, and the inability to create light rail since that would be very public and time consuming. state violence is worth fearing. Hell i might even be able to assemble 50 people to execute cool things but chances are my neighbors won't share the same dream.
This is all to say, thanks, I just wish I knew the path forward. I think I've got a good amount of hope. Now what.
Is interesting that even in such a video one can understand the importance of purity and righteousness for the left. The question of “what is a leftist” and beginning statements with “as a leftist” will always be critical.
I don't get it lol
You are right about third places but the urban planning bit I found confusing. What's wrong with making streets more walkable and advocating for it?
As a librarian, we as a profession generally fall to the left of whatever body governs over us, be that a university or public library board and city council (private/law/business libraries aren't generally open to the public, so they're not applicable). Most people don't realize that librarianship is a profession defined by a code of ethics (see ALA's Reader's Bill of Rights and Code of Ethics) which compell us to be open, neutral, and defenders of intellectual freedom and access. My point is, librarianship is fundementally at odds with neolibral or centrist ideology because we wholeheartedly believe that anyone, regardless of who they are, should have access to information and a public space. Public libraries especially have unfortunately bent to public pressure and implemented anti-homeless policies like no sleeping, loitering, or hyginic standards that are used nearly exclusively to deny the homeless access to the library. Academically and professionally, I've argued for abolishing those policies, and the commercialization/corporatization of libraries (any library that calls patrons or users "customers" should be held to great scrutiny), because they are entirely against the ethics we profess to uphold. Librarianship is theoretically a socialist endeavor, but it has absolutely been corrupted by capitalism, so now the working public librarian often serves as a social worker, therapist, or case manager while also enforcing anti-social policies at the same time.
Personally I'm a big fan of leftist content creator fanfic theory. Theory serves some purpose but has always felt a little self-congratulatory to me - academics writing for other academics, with such language and complexity that it ostracises normal people. Content creators don't always have the full grasp of the theory and can occasionally take it in directions it wasn't meant, but just because they're not presenting it in the same form, and specifically calling out what they're doing, doesn't mean that they aren't progressing the theory. Ray Oldenburg said some pretty outdated things that are opposed to modern leftists, but I'm fine with people taking the framing of "it's nice to have places to go that aren't work and my home, ideally where I don't have to buy stuff" and seeing where that goes.
I was arguing that they aren’t progressing the theory because they are hyper-individualizing it. Third place has started to mean whatever the speaker using the term wants to it mean- that’s not a progression of theory, that’s a fragmentation of it. I don’t think I made this especially clear in the video in hindsight.
actually I think you did a good job making that point, I just think that they (and I for that matter) don't look at theory as a purely academic concept. You might be right that it's a fragmentation and not a progression, but to me it's really an idea, and whether I fully grasp its foundation or not - what I get from the content creators helps me better understand the world in a way I'm not getting elsewhere, and it's actionable in my life.
Language evolves, just because some dork named Ray defined "Third Places" doesn't mean he's the ultimate authority over the term for all time.
Was only able to catch part of it live but super excited to see the whole thing :)
Your greatest video yet! We all want a place where we belong, and must fight the forces preventing us from finding it.
I'm only a couple minutes in and I'm already opposed to the idea that we can't take oldenburgs nomenclature and apply it to whatever we want.
I don't think its irrational to take the idea of "only spending time at home and work is bad" and run with that
I have some friends who have been enthusiastic about a group called Strong Towns, does that group align with the “Right to the City” idea?
LOL
what is your take on a walkable community with trams without any concrete roads, only cyclable paths/walking paths, and also focusing on the local diaspora, letting other local species peacefully exist without heavy machinery and stuff, is it plausible? making all goods and cargo transport by other means and not having any concrete roads, i think i read about this somewhere in a solarpunk city essay or something, it sounded really good to me. Also just came across your channel, will watch the remaining videos, do you think it is possible to build a anti-capitalist anti-soulless city from scratch if you have an opportunity to do so?
Subscribed immediately, I like city planning but often find the lack of a real materialist perspective frustrating. This is fantastic, thanks.
Legend!!
Urbanism has always had very strong links to the left. Thank you seeing the gap in the TH-camr framing of the criticism of city design and city challenges - I think you’re the first creator to use the words “capitalism” as an explanation in this new, new, urbanist movement we are seeing (or whatever you want to call it).
I really don't think Urbanism really has a political slant. You can find Urbanists in almost all ideologies except probably Anarcho Primitivism. There have even been cases where the left was anti-urbanist like in Cambodia.
Other than that, I think you get it.
@@linuxman7777 … Pol Pot ravaged destroyed and starved Cambodia, including my family. His movement was anti-intellectual, authoritarian and nationalist. I hate that you used this as an example of the left being “anti urbanist”. He was left in name only.
this is a fantastic analysis of a relatively mainstream concept taking hold amongst internet urbanists and leftist discourse. being entirely honest, I wasn’t aware of Oldenburg’s awful politics and like many others, was introduced to the concept by other leftist urbanist channels who obviously introduced the concept in good faith, but remained ignorant towards the man behind it, nonetheless. i think it's more than valid to expect leftists to actually read the texts they choose to share with their audiences, along with doing at least some research on the man behind it but oh well.
it’s actually a pleasure to watch someone take an entire man down from a leftist perspective; you know your stuff. i leave this essay sympathetic towards the core idea of a third place (under this system) but aware of how ineffective and substandard it is in regards to tackling root issues, which necessitates system change. I was introduced to lefebvre and Harvey's 'right to the city' essay by Andrewism and was immediately taken about by it. it's the 'guideline' I think we should strive for and I wish leftist TH-camrs would choose to highlight it more than they do the third place.
"try to think more critically about the interests of the people who promote de-regulation and austerity. these people are not our allies", one of the most important statements you made in this essay, and something I'll be thinking about for a while. it's always a bit bitter sweet when I watch something so profound and insightful, that so effectively highlights the necessary work and paradigm shift needed to occur to move us towards the cities we want to live in. "things that are worthwhile are difficult"; it'll be an incredibly grueling effort and as utopian or idealistic as it is, I choose to believe when push comes to shove, people are capable of being moved, mobilization is possible and we can take the actions needed to radically transform our society. essays as good as these sort of re-ignite this feeling in me and I thank you for it