Reclaiming Our Vanishing Third Places

Welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the new urbanism. On the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries, providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. The webinar series is a platform for CNU members to engage, debate, and collaborate on pressing issues of the day. Today's webinar is reclaiming our vanishing 3rd places with Rick Adamski and Jaime And you can share your thoughts on hashtag on the Park [email protected] slash OTPB feedback. And don't forget to join or renew your senior membership, get connected to a powerful movement to advance walkable urbanism. And get the resources and tools to affect change as well as sharpen your skills. And the architecture of community. Navigate to cnu.org and select our member portal. And now for today's webinar. You're joined by Rick Adamski. Ricky Damski is the president of Ash and Lyme, a Dallas based downtown and neighborhood planning firm that has worked in over 30 towns and cities of various types and sizes. Rick employees and incremental community focused approach aimed at enhancing the human experience and helping communities achieve tangible progress toward their goals. His workplaces special emphasis on creating thriving 3rd places that foster community interaction and strengthen local bonds. Rick is a longtime supporter of the new urbanist and strong town movements. Hi, Miyazareta is an architect. Designer and author focused on the interaction between users and the built environment. Hi, me is the founder of Storefront Mastery, an award-winning creative agency that works with place management organizations to design and activate the interaction between local business and the community. With over 20 years experience as a designer, small business owner and economic development consultant, Jaime proudly serves communities of all over the nation from Montclair, New Jersey. And I am Lorne Mayor, communications manager at CNU. As a reminder, please use the Q&A function to ask questions as they occur to you. Now turn it over to Rick and Hymen to start today's webinar. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I will be sharing. My presentation. If you can find it. Huh. Hold on. Okay. Hopefully you could pull it up. I don't wanna have to make all this up as I go along. Yeah, no, you won't. You won't. I'll find it. We could probably do it. No, I'll find it. Should be here. Found it. Excellent. So you got Cool. Excellent. Okay. Can you see the presentation now? Can you see it now? I can see it. Hopefully everybody else can as well. Yes, everyone can see it. Wonderful. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you so much. Our presentation today is, called The 3rd Place, what it is. Way we need it and how to build more. I am super happy to be here joined by Rick. Who has been a long time friend and a colleague. And, we really hope you enjoy this. We were already duly presented, which we are super grateful for. So let's be in with the challenge and I will turn it over to Rick. Sure, so if we look at the challenge, it's actually a pretty simple one and we'll we'll talk a little bit about what 3rd places are. But I assume everybody here has some idea because that's why you were interested in hearing more about it. But they are the challenge is that these are really important. Places of great economic, social, and cultural importance. They really helped to glue the neighborhood together. They're very important for human beings. But they've long been vanishing in week. This has been going on for decades. This has accelerated especially since the pandemic started. And in order to help to bring them back and to strengthen them, we're going to need new strategies. So we wanted to kind of, go over the issues and then have a little bit of discussion about what some of those strategies might be and what some of the approaches might take. To do that. So just kind of what we know is the 3rd place. It's called that because it's not home. It's not work. These are places where people can spend time. Congregate and connect with other people to be to put it very simply and we'll talk about some of the traits. So Ray Oldenburg in 1989 invented this concept of the 3rd place. It's been of growing interest in our post COVID world. Oldenburg had certain Treats that he had, with that described 3rd places. And a lot of times people say, well, this was written in 1989. Do you think the traits are very different now? And I think conditions are very different now, but as I look at it, I don't think the basic traits of 3rd places are necessarily very different than they were at the time. So we'll talk a little bit about what those are. So a 3rd place, some of the things that were defined back in this book in 99 it's a neutral ground so to the extent that it's an ideal 3rd place it's something that can be shared by everybody in the community. It's a leveler. So you may have, you know, certain prestigious status. Ideally, that's leveled off a little bit in these 3rd places. Conversation as the main activity, which is a big challenge now because we know we're all on our phones and our computers. But a place where people can actually converse and then accessibility and accommodation. So that that can mean a lot of different things but the more it's accessible to more people, the better of a 3rd place that it is. Having regulars. Kind of keeping a low profile kind of having a, what we might call a playful mood and maybe most importantly in some ways that it's a home away from home. It's a place where you can go and you can feel comfortable, you know, the old where everybody knows you're name is kind of the ideal of the 3rd place. So. Why they matter. They're very important for community building. They're very important for mental and we might say social health. They help to support act they help to support the economy particularly local economies particularly a downtown on it you know commercial district scale and they're important places where people can engaged directly in their community in a lot of ways. The 3rd place is part of what makes you connected to your immediate community and what makes the place relevant to you. And then I'll talk a little bit about this as well. So we have there's different classifications that we have. A lot of the times will comes to my mind when I think of 3rd places, or commercial places, maybe cafes, maybe barbershops, maybe pubs, diners. But they can also, you know, libraries are brought up a lot of 3rd places, parks and plazas. They can be clubs, cultural centers. You can have places, for example, affiliated with houses of worship. There's lots of different sort of places that can be 3rd places. And I think there's going to be new places that are going to be needed as we go forward. In the future. And the interesting part about this is that I will add to the slide that we just saw the digital spaces. We when we when they ask us about the relevance of Oldenburg's definition of the 3rd place. I think it's super important to acknowledge that from 1989 to 2,024. It's almost been 40 years, I wanna say. Probably. Yeah. And so the technology has advanced greatly. And what we have right now is a completely different landscape of economic economy, economy, the society, our behavior and also of public policy. So these are the 4 factors that we have identified. So these are the 4 factors that we have identified as, public policy. So these are the 4 factors that we have identified as, contributing to the downward trend in the number of 3rd places that we have identified as, contributing to the downward trend in the number of 3rd places that we have currently. And so we will discuss each one of Thank you. So the 1st one is the economic trends. I have included this graphic just to show a little bit of the shift in the quintiles of wealth that we have, especially in the US. Where the amount of people belonging to each one of the classes has changed and as you can see there the people who have more wealth accumulating more wealth has increased. So there's different demands. And so we move on to the economic trends. Projects need to pencil out in order for it for them to happen. So if I have a project and I have a great idea and it really doesn't make economic sense, I may start strong but I will have to make too many painful changes and there is a big chance that it will not see many years open. So what are these economic trends? Number one is specialization. We have specialized greatly. We have found incredible niches. We are able to work in areas that are very, very small and an isolated silos that not necessarily are conducive to, to community building. The world is more organizational now, so there's less less just meeting with friends somewhere, but there is this organizational behavior that most of us are following. And so our meetings, our our agenda has to be delivered. Let's have a coffee next Thursday at 4. So I don't just go to the coffee place at Thursday at 4 and I know that everyone's gonna be there. We have created a lot of wealth. And with that wealth comes different demands. People are willing to invest that wealth to create more, willing to invest that wealth to, to, be in a better standing to find better, better things, to buy better things. And so the 3rd places might be that they just have moved and shifted a little bit and they are not they have not disappeared. Another trend is centralization as we look at the landscape of our cities, we see larger buildings that house less uses. We see larger stores. We see larger offices, larger corporations. And the small space, the small neighborhood cafe, the small neighborhood ice cream parlor, there's not enough, much room for them right now. And as we move on to the societal changes, societal shifts, this is dramatic. This is the change in social media use over time. In 2,011 there was 50% of the population using social media, 2,02174%. As you can imagine, this after the years that we have just. Must have increased dramatically. So we move on to the societal chips. Do people even want 3rd places anymore? The there has been a big shift in the trust of our society. We have we have been moving thankfully not much but we have been moving from a very high trust society to low trust society. What happens here is that high trust society people feel like the values are common and people feel like they can be more We're open to whatever relations that they can make in the public space if there is less trust people are closed off and people are are not willing to make so many so many relations on the public space. Technology has also changed incredibly from 1989 yes but also for the last few years. So technology is enabling people to come closer by interests and the anonymity that in social media allows people to, and this is good a better, allows people to come together without any other or any other factor than we think alike. And there is a great author that some folks might be, might be interested to, look further. His name is Balaji Shrinivasan. He is based in the Bay Area in California and he just wrote a book called The Network State. In which he's talking precisely about this, about how communities right now are being built online and the big shift is going to be those communities being grounded when they decide that they can get together because they have agreed on enough common principles that they can actually get physically together. They can get geographical proximity and then they will be grounded. They will find a land that they will find a place they will find a building where they can move their activities to. So that's also interesting about how technology is allowing people to connect. In very different contexts and in in in greater separation. I can be connected to Rick who is in in Dallas and we have mounted this great presentation and and we met for 2 days in Cincinnati a month ago. So technology is fantastic for that. And also, of course, consumer behavior also changes. We are more technological, we are wealthier and we are demanding more things. We are right now I see for example a trend on people who are offering. Team building services for companies. These team building serve services, they move them into a virtual reality room. So they are chasing zombies in a virtual reality room. The cost of implementing these things is Huge but they can afford that cost because there's enough communities that are willing to bring their employees to these, these same building, this team building activities. So consumer behavior also has changed. And this is very interesting. This is the trend of economics as we have moved from the original, extractive community, economy in which, for example, I go and get some carrots and then I move on to the to the customization of that is I make the carrot juice for you. And then I move to the next one in which I buy the carrots from everyone. I make a lot of juice and I distribute the juice. And then I move on to the experiences in which I stage something. So I turn the carrot juice factory into a museum and I bring people to see that and to engage with the brand and also to buy a lot of juice. And then the last one is the transformation. What we're what we're trying to do is what we're trying to guide people into some sort of transformation, make their time while they are engaged with our in this case 3rd place to be meaningful and to be somewhat transformational. So the difficult 3rd place where you would have a very low barrier of entry Cafe for example where someone could go and just order a man espresso and be there for 4 h and meet with people and talk with people. That has changed dramatically. Right now what we're trying to do is we're trying to mount these laser tag VR team building spaces that are guiding people into some sort of transformation. So we move to the behavioral trends. The experience economy has changed what I just explained, experience economy has changed how we are what we are expecting from the places the the places the brands the companies that we interact with. Home entertainment has changed the way that we interact with the outside world. We stay at home. We watch Netflix. And while doing that, we are not going to the movies. So we are not using the movie theater as this 3rd place or the coffee shop outside the movies as the 3rd place. And then the connection. I think the fact that we have the electronic devices that, that allows, allow us to connect through greater geographical, areas. I think that's, that's changing the way that we, that we create communities. And of course, this will come as a beautiful map. Very few of you and horrible that for most. Policy changes have squeezed out the 3rd places from our neighborhoods. It's very, very hard to open a very small ice cream parlour to open a very small, neighborhood coffee shop. That was the typical 3.rd 3rd place where people could walk to where people could just integrate and go and wait for someone else to show up with changes in zoning, changes business regulations with changes in land uses. It's very hard. It's very, it's very unaffordable for people to open these places. It's very burdensome for people to go through long processes to actually open something that will not be profitable will not dental out. So the policy changes also have squeezed out the 3rd places. And I turn it over to Rick again. So I've, wanted to come up with some case studies of, 3rd places. I was thinking of doing them in a variety of different regions and things like that, but I decided instead to pick some that I had some level of intimate knowledge of because what I want to understand is, okay, we still do have some of these places. Some of them work. And what I wanna understand is why? Because our old models are not going to work. So this is an example of a place in my neighborhood. It's called wild detectives bookstore and coffee house but it actually is not a detective bookstore or anything like that. It's just a place that is Very vibrant if you go in at noon it's very vibrant if you go 3 it's you know it's hopping if you go at 11 o'clock pm right it has a lot of energy it has a lot of people hanging out and it's a place where you can go and converse with people and meet with them. So I said, okay, why does this place work? Why is it successful, whereas other coffee houses, for example, are having to close at 3 pm or other bookstores are not really very vibrant. In the case of this place, it has multiple sources of monetization and makes money off books, coffee, bars. It actually makes, I, I think I heard one time about 30% of its revenue by books, which shocked me. So it has a lot of different ways that it makes money. It has a lot of different ways to bring people in at different times. It has indoor space, outdoor space, and it has strong programming. So what this is proof of is that the old coffee house model, if you're just slinging coffee, it doesn't matter how much you're charging for a latte, you have to combine it with something else in order to make it work as a real 3rd place. That, that can serve people at different times. Okay, so this is a place called Central Arts. Josh who runs central arts is here. There's 2 different locations. These are in very kind of post-war suburban strip shopping centers near in the Dallas Fort Worth area. You would drive back these places and not know that they're amazing and they are these incredible places. Venues, galleries, arcades, classrooms. It's a not-for-profit organization that works with developers that have vacant the new life space. I think what I would add is that in this case, it's a labor of love. You have you have Josh who's dedicated a lot into creating this amazing thing for the community. So, you know, I think there's some people who are willing to do things like this as, as labors of love, but they need to be supported. You need to figure out ways to get space for them to get help for them. He's helped development really succeed in some of these trip shopping centers. He can show a lot of data to show that. So, it's in the interest either of a developer or a city to, to help him out as has happened in his case, to do something like this. This is a place called opening bell. This is just south of downtown Dallas. This is, you know, a great 3rd place. It's open kind of late, not as late as it used to be. But people are hanging out here all the time. You can have concerts. It's the type of place we could go. Grab a cup of coffee and check out a really cool concert to check out a really full open mic. That's not as common as it as it used to be where there's not that much of a barrier to entry. In this particular case, it's part of this complex called South S. So it's this big residential building that has a lot of things. This basically serves as an amenity for the building. So basically the developer knew that in order for the building. So basically the serves as an amenity for the building. So basically the developer knew that in order for this for their whole development to succeed, they had to have things for their whole development to succeed, they had to have things for people to do. And this is a case of that. This is a place called Petruchio's. This is in Denton, Texas, which is kind of borderline DFW area, but it's a college town so it has many really really cool 3rd places in this particular case it's a bookstore but they also have games that you can get coffee and it's a really welcoming environment and they have kind of some goods. So this is a bookstore but you can tell as with many other places I've seen that they're very conscious about creating this as a 3rd place and I'm sure that it also helps them a lot more. To solve books because I know when I'm in downtown Denton, even though there's a lot of great places to go, I always make it here because it's a great environment and I always make a point to buy something. And I think a lot of other people are like that as well. And then this is a place called Firehouse Castro Park. Actually, this we are this has an indoor and outdoor space and we helped to. To sort of test out the outdoor space. Several years ago when they were when it was originally kind of in the pre built stage. This is a place, it's a bar, it's a restaurant, it's a coffee house, but they also have outdoor spaces that it's really well programmed. They've got outdoor games and furniture. They have a lot of different things to do. It's the type of place where you can be the adults, but you can also bring a kid, a toddler, a teenager, and everybody is going to have a great time. So it's well programmed, it has different energies at different times of the day and week. So it's another example of, of how you can do these things. So my, all of these places. You know, there was a time maybe, you know, would I was, would I was younger instead of being a middle age guy. There was a time when these places could just happen naturally when somebody might have a labor of love. Maybe it doesn't make a ton of money, but they could open up a coffee house and if they wanted to keep it open until one or 2 am and and you know just kind of mainly sell coffee they could do that. What we see, what I see as many examples in my area alone is that there's a lot of places that are doing it, but they need to figure out the model to make it work. They need to figure out the creativity and they need to understand that it doesn't work automatically anymore. You have to take creative approaches and that's the type of thing that I want to think about and that we're we talked to cities about and that we talked to businesses about is how can we come up with a strategy to make to make this a 3rd place. And support it and how can cities downtown you know economic development organizations main street managers support this type of place. As you are talking, Rick, one. Additional 3rd place comes to mind. That I have only been a few times to, but I think it works very, very well. It's the design district in Miami. And this place has the most expensive brands fashion brands you can think of. And they make a point to make the most extravagant displays and the place has been designed to be a beautiful gallery for these brands. And they have Meeting spaces, they have public spaces where they have concerts. The concerts are mainly free. You can just go there and watch the concert and I have seen amazing artists there. It's it's really really amazing and people can just be in those public places people can meet in these public spaces and yes if you go to the restaurants and you go to the coffee shops and if you go to the entertainment places it will be a more higher offer and of course a more expensive offer that is a very high barrier of entry for most but the public spaces are open and anyone can go there, anyone can enjoy them. And when they have activations and entertainment, they, they're open, they're open to the public. So that's just what I thought as you were talking, may or may not be related, but that's, another one that I've just been. Now the question is can we fix this? We are focusing on the decline of the number of 3rd places. Of course, there's a lot of examples of fantastic great 3rd places currently that have been created in later years that may make people to think, but what are these guys talking about? There is no decline. What about these fantastic places? But the truth, the reality is that we need more of them because the epidemic of loneliness in cities is, it's, I guess it's, it's, it's crying for help. So places is, is a, the abundance of 3rd places. It's an issue that we really need to, tackle. So we are thinking of 2 ways in which which we may address the decline on the number of 3rd places. Number one is to find new models and number 2 is the adaptation to new values. Pick. So just thinking about sort of these case studies that I gave in other case that I've seen and how we can think about 3rd places. You know, so one of them is saying we're gonna combine several economically productive uses into one place. I gave the example of wild detectives. A bar can usually figure out how to make it, but a coffee house or bookstore. Those are rough models or there's a place called the spin in far north, Dallas, that is both a record store and a coffee house. And it's really good at being both, right? So it's like, can you take different things that are maybe economically productive and combine them? Subdividing spaces into multiple uses. The smaller you can break things down, the more creative you can be, the more you can lower the barrier to entry towards doing really good stuff and the less standardized everything has to be. Finding creative uses of vacant and underutilized spaces. You know, we have right now we're, you know, a lot of our Bay Street have too many vacant storefronts, which, that's his specialty right there, but that's something that all of us who work on downtown, come across. How do you creatively think about these spaces or thinking about strips of urban shopping centers? Places that we just blow off in many cases if urbanists that we shouldn't blow off because these are huge opportunities to think. Creatively with space, increasing programming. Having, having, you know, different things that we do at different times that might mean, you know, we're, we're gonna have wine walks here. We're gonna have different things that we do outside that are going to attract people to this place. Project for public spaces talks about the power of 10 plus can you take a public space and have end plus things to do in them. And then working with not for profit organizations that have certain types of missions. So if we think of one opportunity is And normally in most ways they don't necessarily fit the the definition of a 3rd place that could be debatable, but a lot of times they have the space and they have the opportunities to do this. So there's a suburb of Dallas called Mesquite, and there's a church right in the downtown, but they also, allow they were former opera house, right? They also allow, special events to happen within their church. And they also have a lobby that that serves coffee all the time and they also do art openings. And present art in the lobby, right? So all of these places can be opportunities if we think creatively. So as we are talking about this, what I would like to, an idea I would like to leave with the audience as we talk about this is how this plugs into what you do and what you can do in your community to help. Hey, 3rd place, So now we move on to the adaptation to new values. I was talking a lot about how space has moved to the digital realm and how we are finding our communities online and how we are meeting our communities that are transcending many of the divisions that we have in our in our society but we can meet in an intellectual in an intellectual basis with with people online and so those communities can be more profound those communities can be more deliberate. Those communities can be stronger. And when they meet and when they ground, you can be a beautiful thing. So, cities can foster the real life manifestation of digital communities. The digital communities will have to ground because the the end of what we are trying to do everyone is to meet with people and then do Okay. Whenever that happens, cities can be ready to help this happen. How can we, how can they do this? They may simplify rules for community, mind the digital entrepreneurs. Typically the places where this would happen are places like the ones Rick showed. Are places where the owners are open to new to new ventures where the owners are open to combined uses where the owners are open to have 2 seemingly completely different sources of revenue but that are coming together into a place they are people who are typically more prone to activate their places with entertainment. They they they are they are they're aware that their business is not so much what they do but hospitality so they are being hubs of their communities and bringing people into their places, promoting the hybridization of innovative businesses. So what this mean means is that people can have different channels and one of those channels for a 3rd place can be the digital channel. So they can become this great place where communities are finding their way into and also having the actual physical 3rd place and then making that those connections so people when they ground they come to their places. Evolving rule setting to values based organizations. This is what Rick talked about the, houses of worship worship, for example, when they can set up places that right now, for example, there's 3 or 4 churches in my town. I live in a town of 40,000 people. There's within 5 min walk there's 3 or 4 churches that have huge parking lots that they cannot do anything with those parking lot because they are required. Right? So when we are devolving the power to set rules to these, for example, houses worship, they can say, okay, what if we create a, I don't know, how's in project, what if we create a community center? What if we create a knitting club and these things may happen when they have a little bit more power and a little bit more decision making power on what they do in their with their land. And also including remote in local programming there's lots of wonderful festivals that cities put up. There's lots of wonderful activities and these can have some sort of remote component where they are meeting up with another great festival that's happening at the same time in different city. So these things start to the remote, the digital spaces start to make sense in a locals in a local, context. And that could work, very well. I think that's it. Thank you so much. Let's keep building the new 3rd places. Our contact information is there if you want to contact us with any questions or anything regarding this presentation would be super happy to to oblige and I am going to stop sharing so we can turn it over to Laura. Thank you so much. That was really awesome. Somebody who loves the coffee shop. I was really excited about all the ones in your area, Rick. So I'm going to start us off with a few questions that I have prepared and then we'll turn it over to the audience QA. So as a reminder to our attendees, you can put any questions you have right in that QA function. So to start off, I was just wondering, how does new urbanism play a role in your work? And kind of what principles do you find the most relevant? No, it's interesting for me because I've gone to I've been to 12 CNUs, I guess, or something like that or I've been going for about 12 years. I guess I've been to about 1110, 11 Cnu's. I think that the new urbanism, A, that the original new urbanism really figured out the very fundamentals physically of how we build places. And really pulled that out of the dustbins of history in the eighties and nineties and it's very much. Embedded in the way that I think about how to create. Complete communities how to and integrate sort of how to integrate various uses into people's lives and how to offer an option. That people can be much more physically connected to community through design. I think what's kept me going back. Year after year is that. Something that I think most people who don't. Who don't closely file the new urbanism know is that most of the great ideas that have come out of the last 30 years of urbanism have been closely connected to the new urbanism in some way. So I've seen a lot of things like the tactical or miss movement that I've, you know, that I've been very kind of connected to for many years. But, but just about anything, you know, if you look at the concepts, you know, starting with transitory into development, starting with sort of the relationship with the Strong Towns movement and the understanding of incrementalism. I think at 1st the new urbanism figured out how to physically build places. But I think as it's evolved, it's also started to understand how to build places for people and how money connects to that. So that I guess that's a short version of it for me. It's kind of influenced everything about the way that I think about about my profession. That's awesome. I found a new organism when I was still in architecture school and this is gonna be 25 years now. So the biggest thing, the biggest breakthrough that I've found way back then and I keep finding now is the fact that we are talking about scale and we are obliterating the concept of You need a big building that is supposed to do this. As opposed to you need a wonderful city where anything can happen and small things happening make a beautiful city. So I think that is that is the way that this connects the best with the 3rd place concept is that if we are allowed to have very small places, if we are allowed to have to have human scale initiative, let's say, in our cities. It's very possible that I can open up my garage and just throw a rug and put a sofa there and it'll be a 3rd place, right? Usually if you are in a place with a nature, for example, they'll side me. So, it's, it's very important to, be able to think of. How uses, how regulations, how, zoning are affecting our individual ability to, Do you create 3rd place? Absolutely, super awesome. Also learning about your both of your involvement with CNU. I'm always interesting to hear from our panelists. So I'm gonna actually turn over to some of our attendee questions as they keep flying in. Kind of a 1st question that I want to ask you is You kind of frame the start of this and like the post COVID era and what we're seeing 3rd places. And we had an attendee wondering what about the kind of parklets and plazas that came out of that time and kind of where you see that role in 3rd places moving forward. Okay, are fantastic. I see I live very close to New York City and just seeing the way that space has been reclaimed from parking to seating has been amazing. These are mainly not 3rd places in the original Samsung. These are extensions of the serving area of restaurants. So if I am going to this wonderful French place and I'm having, I don't know. Whatever, and a glass of wine, I can sit there. If I am not, I cannot. So Yes, there's a lot of more opportunities to engage in public space have come after COVID thankfully, but not necessarily being low barrier of entry, not necessarily being public, at least in the in the sense of the Okay. Plus us open streets for example, we can now just close whatever streets and it'll be a public space now. Yes, there's many, many more chances to do that. And there's a lot of people who are doing that. I met someone in, in a, place making X meeting in Brooklyn. They, they do dancing. And they just put up part of fabulous parties and and and people and they would just come and it's a beautiful way of building community from the ground up. So yes, there's. Some places that have come up that are not necessarily 3rd places and yes, there's lots of opportunities that people have found to create 3rd places. Yes. I guess that destroys our argument, but the fact of the matter is that there's a lot more people in the world right now and there's a lot more ways to interact and to and to connect with other people. If we explore more what these new instances are for 3rd places like the digital spaces, we can explore more how to ground these things and how to plug these things into cities that desperately need them. So I've had I've had a little bit different experience in my immediate neighborhood. I live in the bishop arts neighborhood in Dallas. And during COVID, there were a lot of sort of parklets and outdoor seating areas that were put out there without without permission. And it's funny because I'd spent 7 years talking to the city about, hey, how could we get Parkland out there? And what's surprising is that they're still there in and in a neighborhood that has profound parking issues. The city has let them be out there and they are used. In the not very privatized way in in the case of of this particular neighborhood in Dallas. People kind of, if I want to sit there, grab, you know, grab a burrito in the morning and sit in any of these places, I can do so and you have a lot of that. I would say that there is, you know, there is a line between kind of The 3rd place and public space that can be murky. And that maybe could be, you know, you could hammer in a definition. A 3rd place usually is a little bit more of kind of it's, open to people, but it's still you're still in a particular environment in general, I would say. Whereas if you're in a public space, if you're in a plaza, I think that's a little bit different than being in a 3rd place. And if you're, as in my neighborhood, where you can go now and you can sit out in public, maybe next to a restaurant. It's a little bit more murky as to what that is, but I think. Overall, any trend of extending out into the public space. And strengthening the public space, whether or not we call it a 3rd place is, is certainly a trend. That is is very positive and it's been a tremendously positive thing for my neighborhood at least. Very interesting. Yeah, absolutely. There have been a lot of experiences over the past couple of years that I've definitely informed place making moving forward I think. And speaking of kind of place making on more the regulatory side. We have a couple of questions kind of about the impact on zoning. And kind of what the role of things like real estate developers might be. In creating these 3rd places. I think developers need them. It's very hard to create something from scratch that really works from day one. So I think the. People who have the most interest in 3rd places being Very active and bringing a lot of people our developers because this is how they are able to say, hey, the place I created is a success, as opposed to I created this wonderful place that looks beautiful, but 2 or 3 years in, it's decaying because no one came, right? It's, it's their triumph to say, hey, this really works because it attracts a lot of people. So being in their best interest to have that, I think there's a lot of people who are, experimenting on this and they're like I know a lot of developers whose whose narratives are precisely that. There's 1 gentleman out of Atlanta who his thing is tacos and patios. This is what brings people together. This is precisely a 3rd place, right? It's a very basic garage that you can open and sell a tackle and people will come and people will will get together and people will talk and people will form a community, right? So I, I think developers are the best. The best suited people to actually think of these places and provide these places. Yeah, I mean, in the zoning question is a complex one. I think in a lot of cases. Zony, to kind of rift off of High May's point from before is meant to very much standardize things and so it helps to create a situation where everything is kind of the same as everywhere else. And where there's a high barrier to entry to somebody who wants to come in. So I think, you know, there's ways to have things, for example, but, I think it's about lowering the barrier to entry and breaking things down into smaller units, right? It's like, okay, we've got this big storefront. Can we break it down into multiple businesses? So that's someone can just come in and there's a lot of different ways to. To kind of do that type of incubation. In terms of developers. I mean, the thing about Any type of development, especially if it's mixed use. But even if it's not you you have a chicken egg problem, right? It's like, well, we want to have the amenities. But if we don't have the rooftops, how do we get the amenities? And a lot of times getting residential units in. Is a lot easier than getting a bunch of retail in and things like that. And so when developers think of retail, they tend to think of very standardized models. That are generally not or if commercial uses restaurants, there are generally not really 3rd places. So if they start thinking creatively, they can do that. There's a place I actually found the name of it. It took me a long time to find the name and I'm drawing a blank right now. But there's a place in Chicago that I used to go to. You literally had a developer who had in the Rogers Park member in Chicago. He owned a bunch of different properties. He had a vacant storefront and he went to a not-for-profit groups. And he said, if you all pay the utilities. You can use this space, pay a dollar a month rent and the only thing I ask is that whatever happens here, no money can be exchanged, right? So This would have been a vacant spot for him. You have someone taking care of it. You have something that's drawing people in. It's definitely in this developers best interest to have something there rather than nothing and it's in their interest to have something that's great of and that doesn't necessarily compete with the other businesses there. There's a lot of examples of developers who are sitting on vacancy that they're renting it out for cheap or at no cost. In fact, we, I use the example of the opening bell coffee, which, and there's other examples where they're kind of like, we're going to subsidize this a little bit because you're going to be the amenity that helps us rent out all of these all these apartments units here. If I were a developer, I would be thinking very consciously about that because if you're gonna try to get people live there or especially to office at a time when we know what the office market is like. You've got to have amenities and I would be personally. Be 3rd places that will make people hang out here and that will make people love and care about what I'm doing here. Totally makes sense. And speaking of, you know, creating places people love, Lonnie asked a question, which is, what can community members do to repair the loss of a 3rd place? And she gives the example, or they give the example of our local pub brewery was closed and scraped and replaced by a drive through, a fast food train. That's a That's horrible. I take it regular walks around my town and If you don't know that North Jersey is very packed together, we are landlocked. So I walk 4 blocks and I'm in a different town. So whenever I go to the next town over there's a wonderful avenue. It's beautiful tree line, very, very tall trees. Beautiful houses. It's 100% residential, but I'm walking there. And there is the, the greenway, which is an old rail line that connects, Morris County with New York City, with Jersey City actually. And, the point is that these people have created these little living room. They put 2 benches. And a Chinese part with flowers that they may be seasonal or whatever. They put them today, they take them tomorrow. And there's a little plaque that says, stay a while. The town, not many people walk in the town, but whenever 2 people are walking, this is where they will meet. This is where they will stop for 2 min and share. Maybe they don't even sit, but this place has been created to stop to force people to make a pass and force people to connect and when they are connecting with the place they are also connecting with each other. So this is something that people can do very easily. Provide events. Put a bench in every street corner and see what happens. There's a wonderful project by the Social Life project of Fred Camp who most people will know here. And he's saying just put a bunch in every corner and see what happens. The community building the community building minded people will come and will make that the hub of the community. I mean, I, I love that example. So, you know, I think that The. If if you own say commercial property or something like that or your part of a downtown association or you're active in a place. Sometimes finding a place to focus on can be easier, right? And it's all about increments. Whether you're, you know, whether you're figuring out how to create a place or how to make a place that already exists. Better, right? So it can be as simple as, hey, we've got this coffee house here. But it kind of closes at 3 because that's how it made it makes, you know, money. Can we come? Can we organize a game night? Can we have people agreeing to buy things? And can we make this so that you have one more night where it's open where it's lively and where it makes money, right? Or it could be we've got this space here, can we, can we use it? A lot of the work that I've done over the last 10 and a half years, almost 11 years actually. Has been about, you know, kind of coming in and figuring out where can we organize people so that property owners, business owners. The mainstream manager, the, you know, chamber, the economic development person are in the same page and find opportunities. So it can be a little bit hard just as a citizen. To find that, I would say as a citizen, if nothing else, I just find myself being very conscious about supporting these places and I find myself I think just as a normal citizen one of the best things you can do is vote with your money and you know you have places like opening Bell or several other places where someone can come in and spend a couple dollars and hang out for a while. If I can come in and I can afford to spend $20 and buy some stuff. That's a good way to help move the needle or if I can make it a little bit more of a contribution. To the person who's, you know, performing or something like that throw a little back for money in their pot. You know, I think of it. A lot of what inspires me to think about. 3rd places I happen to be somebody who a lived in a lot of areas that were a little bit different than the US experience, you know, Ann Arbor, Michigan, the university neighborhood of Cincinnati, kind of some of your, cooler neighborhoods in Chicago and things like that. So I got to experience a lot of these places, but I also see how they how they enhance my life, right? I met my ex wife in 2,001. At a place called Gorman's. That was open until midnight. And, we, we were doing poetry readings there and I bought a cup of tea. And I could hang out at this place. Okay. Until midnight and participate in poetry readings and open mics, right? You could not do that. In Chicago or in most American cities. Today or nothing even close to it. So, I think a little bit of a tangent, but I think like what you support, if nothing else with your personal life and then how you organize with other people who are part of your community and help to see how you can create something good. It is probably the broadest answer I could give to that. Absolutely. Yeah, really also like that concept of the stay a while timing as well. I thought that was a good way of thinking about it. So yeah, we're powering through these questions, but we still got a lot more out there. So Jeffrey Osman asks, how do shopping malls with anchor stores and gathering places like food courts? Play into the 3rd place concept and as these malls are kind of die of where can young people and teenagers go So the mall copied main street. The mall is a copy of Main Street in a safe and secured and secluded place. I always say that it's time to demonstrate to copy back. We have 50, 60 years of lessons that more has learned. That we can copy back and we can bring back to public space so yeah we can hang out in public space is 100% we just need to make them more friendly Yeah, I mean, I think, and I think that, you know, I've, worked on some very Creative ideas and concepts in, in strip shopping centers. I was involved in, for example, this place. Grow de Soto, which is in an inner ring suburb of Dallas. That shows that you can, we can rethink creatively. Shopping centers to have semi public spaces in public spaces. Obviously, some of the comments in this this group right now are saying things like, you know, most developers don't think that outside the box. I agree. there's going to need to be developers who think a little bit more outside the box as some do and there's going to need to be cities that are willing to work with these developers and willing to be flexible about their rules. We're, teenagers go nowadays. I don't know. It's, it's, I find it. Personally to be depressing and one of the things that I've been really conscious of is talking to enough young people. To be persuaded. That my perspective on the disappearing 3rd places isn't, you know, some middle aged guy who's looking back at his youth and not realizing what the youth are doing. I really don't think that's the case at all. So for example, I'll go on social media a lot to try to be very specific. What is a place where you could go in your community for under $10 and connect with people and have a good time. But and a lot of people say a lot of younger people even say the library. Now, libraries are wonderful. I spend, I go to libraries. Now, probably once a week, I love libraries. If you're a high school student or a college student and the best place to go in your community for under 10 bucks. To meet with people, to connect with people and to socialize. Is the library. There's something that's missing that you're being deprived of as a young person in my opinion. My there should be better options for fun than hanging out the library. And in many cases it appears that they're not. So I don't, you know, I know there's a virtual world. I doubt that it's a substitute and a lot of the young people who I talk to tell me that it's not a substitute for them. Gotcha. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, we saw some folks in the chat. Here and as well talking about libraries. Is a 3rd space, and how they've evolved a little bit, I think, again, to match the kind of void that you're describing for a lot of these young folks. Another question here is from Tess Darringfield. And she's asking as an older millennial, it feels like all these examples. Are engineered for my post hips to our expendable income demographic. How long is that appeal going to last? Our younger generations going to keep sustaining them or are we going or are they going to seem dated? I think they will seem dated. I think What are the places we love to go when we go to other places are typically historical places and they have some specific characteristics that have that have stayed through hundreds of years and we're looking for those same things. Regardless of the design of the places, Right, right now everyone is using the, subway tiles and, open phase break and all the, you know. Typical things that everyone is using right now in places and everything starts to look the same. Right? In a few years, that will be dated, but the principals will stay. If you have a wonderful host if you have a place where people are not going to harass you when you're there if you have a place that has a regularly low barrier of entry. That will stay regardless of the design. Some designs really don't get old. So maybe, maybe we'll see. I mean, we see that resurgence of eighties arcades. I was just at an eighties arcade with my son and he was playing Pac-man and Mortal Combat. So, yeah, I mean, some things really do stay. And, and you know, so that's a good point. And I think that, As somebody who was, you know, young at a certain time and in certain kind of alternative cultures, right? Like I, see that where, you know, sometimes there's some people not, most, but some people in the technical urbanism movement where it feels like, okay, did you create something for other hipsters or you're creating something for everybody. So the examples that I'm attracted to may connect with. My own experience in that way, you know, I think the principle has to be lowering the barrier to entry. So that whoever wants to do something could do it creatively. As The planning consultant, right? I come into a place and it's like, I'm an outsider. So what I can do is give you tools and resources and share some things. And if you can run with it, you'll look good and I'll look good, right? Well, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be here. I haven't been here for 20 years doing the work and I'm not gonna be here for another 20 years. That's your job. I'm just here to kind of give you some tools. So I think that's a good question, but I think that the idea of of, of lowering the barriers is a good one. I, you know, it's interesting. I was, several months ago I was, someone mentioned I was walking around my neighborhood. I was thinking if I were, you know, maybe a teenager. With $10 in my pocket. Where would I hang out in this neighborhood besides maybe the coffee house? And once I did that and I was walking around my neighborhood, which has, you know, 50 businesses immediately to bubble shop, I'm like, that's right hangout. I'd be over there. so, you've got, you know, in Denton, you've got a Kaba bar, that's opened up that has no alcohol. And this is that college town I mentioned, but it's packed in there and it's social in there. It has a lot of the functions. Of the traditional functions of a bar or an old school coffee house there. So Yeah, making sure that, As. Planners or as place makers. That we're not imposing our preferences on to other communities. Perfect. But instead we're helping them to fulfill their own needs is a good reminder that I appreciate. One thing I can say is that What I do so it's not good to impose any of our views, but I think it's very very important for people who are trying to provide these places that want them to last. That there's a few things that are necessarily completely necessary in places. And I'm going to refer again to another book by, authors, Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine. 1st book is The Experience Economy and the second book is authenticity. And the idea of the authenticity book is that whenever we are trying to provide an experience and right now we are talking about deliberately providing experiences, but this is what we have been doing forever. This is how when you open a place, people decide to come or do not decide to come. It's because you are either offering a good experiences or you're not offering a good experience. Right now we are delivering about it. And the idea is that it needs to be authentic. It needs to be hospitable and it needs to be fun. So whenever people are coming and see that there is a great host that that is genuinely and authentically greeting them and happy to have them in his home. Or their home. It's very important. It's also very important so that when the people go in, they see that the place has been crafted with love. It hasn't just been put up as a movie sets to bring people for 5 min and then head them out. And, and it also needs to be a place where people can easily, connect. I see lots of comments and questions that are touching the, the transportation issue. So So there's, we would probably need an extra hour to touch everything that relates to transportation. But one thing I can say is that There's some places that have been. Blessed. That they don't require extra efforts for people to go there. They just walk for 5 or 10 min and meet in a place. These places have been blessed. And so, yes, I guess what we need to do is we need to think of providing the best experience possible the best reason. So that people want to come, the best experience possible, the best reason so that people want to come, especially places that are not as blessed as downtowns on mainstream. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I'll just note for our attendees that we're right around one o'clock. So if you need to dip out, thank you so much. For joining us. A recording of this presentation will be made available within 24 h. We have a couple more questions. So if you guys want to stick around for a few minutes, we can kind of wrap those up. And again, if you have to dip out, this will be part of the recording available tomorrow. So to continue a couple of our questions, there's this one that's. Have you seen examples where the different components of a space like a bookstore with a coffee shop and music are run by different entities. I have. I work with, local businesses. That's my job working with local businesses. So I see a lot of that. The one thing I see is that the ability to make partnerships sometimes is not innate of business owners. Sometimes it is, but sometimes when it's not in need of business owners, this is the role of the Property manager if it's if it's a private development or the district manager if it's a main street or downtown or whatever. They can, they can foster these partnerships. They can, they can foster a lot of, a lot of ways for, for business owners to meet outside of the regular business. So I don't know, meeting greens or business breakfast or whatever so that they are starting to come together and they're starting to talk and they're starting to forge partnerships when the place the atmosphere of the place becomes a place of partnerships more partnerships happen so It's very important to keep the people together and and working. I have definitely seen places where different providers get together and they rent one place and they put their business, their different businesses in the same place, they're acting as separate entities. I've seen other places where someone decides to open the place and brings the other entities as providers and they sell their wares. I mean, I've seen several combinations of this. I've seen what I do see a lot. Is that property owners are not keen to have more. Places rented to more people. They want to have their places rented to less people because that's less work for them. That's understandable, but it's, I guess there's a Goldilocks area that we need to find so that we are providing enough. Diversity enough offering for the city while keeping the sanity of the developers or the property owners. So I think that that's a lot of, I think, High Mates Point is correct that it's more administratively complex. However, I think that's really the wave of the future and what needs to happen. And the reason why I say that is because I think all of this stuff, I keep using the phrase lowering barrier to entry and at the risk of being a broken record I think that's that's what needs to happen. So if Because if I want to take a storefront, right? It's like I've got to get I've got to have really good credit. I have to have a whole lot of confidence in my business model. I have to take out a 5 year lease, a 10 year lease. And if things don't, if things go wrong, I have a lot of other responsibilities right for the whole space. And if things go wrong, I'm going to be ruined. So the question is, can you do something where you're saying, okay, we're going to take a space and we're going to subdivide it into several businesses. So I gave the example that which is worth looking into of grow to soda where they literally took this old Ace hardware and now it's a bunch of micro retail micro restaurants by this this guy Monty Anderson who I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this right now know, and it functions as a 3rd place and it has a lot of really unique businesses because you can come in and you can take a small space and take a short-term lease and if it falls apart. Then you know you're gonna be much more okay. Similar in our area, the same developer, Monty, this place Tyler Station, which has everything from industrial uses to, a brewery to co-working art gallery stores all of this stuff in about a hundred 10 square mile space. Now in some cases. He actually says, okay, you're gonna rent this space for me and then you can sublease it so that he doesn't have to deal with every single time. But you think of there's a place I think of in in Fort Worth that I just rediscovered after a long time called Docs Record and Vintage and you've got this big huge record store. We have a bunch of little vintage places as well. That are all very well curated. This, this is the traditional model that's used globally, right? This is all of the stuff that we're doing, whether it's starting the new urbanism or moving on to the strong counts movement that's like, okay, we're rediscovering lost. Technologies that we develop over millennia. It's like if you have a farmers market you've got a bunch of different vendors if you have you know a bizarre and in Mexico right we still in our region we have a bunch of these buildings big box doors and we have a bunch of these buildings big box stores and you have a bunch of unique businesses that are in that. We have a bunch of these buildings, big box stores and you have a bunch of unique businesses that are in that. So it's a matter of how you curate them and there's a tremendous number of examples and I think there are other things that could be evolved. Into something more interesting. So I just went into and antique mall, in, McKinney, which is kind of a very suburb, you know, downtown. It's like the perfect downtown in DFW. Like everything's at a hundred percent. Everything's perfect. I go into this antique mall and I find this little place that sells records and I'm finding dead these and Megadeth records in downtown McKinney, Texas. Only by subdividing it so much that people can take many risks. Are you gonna find a dead Kennedy's record? In, McKinney, Texas, right? It's just, it, it, allows, breaking things down the lous creativity and that's what place after place that I'm seeing. We could do a whole webinar on that, right? That's a huge thing that's, happening all over the place. Yeah, I'm getting the sense that I think this is a ripe topic for maybe a couple more on the Park Bench webinar. Definitely. Just a couple more questions here. One more back to the role of remote work and the official or informal shared workspaces which seem like the primary use of a lot of 3rd spaces like coffee shops. And how do you see the use of work? How do you see the role of remote work in developing or harnessing or being harnessed for creating places. I'm gonna refer to the call working. Spaces first, st I guess. So there's a lot of. Instances where people have been working remote and have been trying to find places to work. Not necessarily working in their homes, but going into the coffee shop, going into the whatever in their towns and those places become de facto 3rd places. Right, but you are not there to socialize. You are not there if people are talking to you while you're in a meeting, you will not be nice. You will not respond if people are talking to you while you're in a deadline. You may not be nice, may not respond. So I guess one of the main things for this is that they need to be places of leisure where people are just there and open to conversation and open to meeting other people. And few are in a work schedule that may not be compatible with, you know, social instances. Although they may have their own activations of the space. They may have their own agenda for, I don't know, making, coworker socials. So every Thursday at 5 pm they just I don't know pop up a few beers and people get together and talk and these are people that have been working together, not not together but in the same place for a while so they they have seen each other have said hi to each other so there's more chances for people to meet but necessarily The 3rd places are but not necessarily 3rd places are places where people have something else that they need to do, I'm I wouldn't include them at least not in the 1st places of a list. Kind of Rick feels differently. Well, yeah, so it's interesting because it's like this melding of the second place in the 3rd place, right? Like when they 1st said it's like you've got your home, you've got your work, and then you've got your 3rd place. I was in for most of the last 10 and a half years I've been in. Co-working spaces either at 1st sharing, you know, sharing a floor or in private offices. I now happen by coincidence. To be a sub, to be sub leasing in a private office of what 6 years ago was a co-working space where I was co-working it. At the same space and it still has a lot of those functions like they still have a lot of special events. So I have been especially the last space I was in kind of changed, but before it was like you definitely had a lot of events and sometimes it was a distraction. For example on Thursday nights there'd be starting Thursday afternoon there were a certain group of people who started tuning out and going wild every Thursday and I remember my intern going do these people work? It's like you're just coming on Thursday. They normally work, right? So it can be a distraction, it can be a conflict. When I st at this place, I had some references that the person knew and he was like, I'm not, I don't have people, I don't want people here who aren't here to work, right? Like we'll have an event a couple of times a month and you're welcome to come and have a drink or 2 but like if you're not here to work all day then it's just a distraction for me. So, you know, but so, and I've seen a lot of examples that Tyler Station example I gave, has a co-working space that's That's much like that, wax base. But I think that a The co-working model itself. Is challenging, right? So like we're finding that it's not a great model where co-working models have worked is if the person who is already, someone already has an office there, they're already there every day and they also run a core working space so that you don't have to hire separate staff to staff it. So the traditional model we have of co-working is not necessarily very functional. In terms of kind of the melting of the classic example being people doing work in a coffee house, right? I think that There can be like there's going to be an element of that right and that's like how it's approach like I got my study done in coffee houses when I was in college. I used coffee houses like they were bars, right? I mean, I wasn't, they didn't serve alcohol. Most ones I went to, but it was like, I'm hanging out there and told one, I'm hanging out with friends. I'm also getting work done, but it's a little bit of a melding of the 2. I think that there can be a melting up the 2, but I think it's very challenging. Places like wild detectives. They have ways the example that I gave earlier they have ways of kind of trying to discourage a lot of it like for example they don't have Wi-Fi on weekends. And you know, sometimes people are gonna use Wi-Fi anyway, sometimes people are gonna work like it's okay to have to have that a little bit, but if it's too much, it's a lot. You also get away with it more to go back to the example of wild detectives if it's a place with some nooks and crannies. Where you can sit here and probably most people are gonna sit at this table like you've got these big share tables and people kind of sit there and do work. But you've also got couches in the back. You've also got a bar. You've also got outdoor in front and out back, right? So you've got a lot of different experiences that people could have. And that can work better. But ultimately, you know, in in sort of If we summarize the whole thing, I don't think that the use of these places as workspaces. In that is particularly conducive to their use as 3rd places where people can connect. I think that there's definitely. A conflict of purposes there. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely a very interesting conversation that I'm sure will keep impacting a lot of coffee shops in 3rd places. Around the country. And kind of with that, I think this is a good place to thank you both so much for your time and wrap this up. As a reminder of this is recorded and will be available tomorrow. Hi May and Rick. Thank you once again for such a wonderful conversation and I hope everyone who was able to join today has a wonderful day. Thank you so much. Alright, thanks. Thanks for having us. Thanks everybody for coming in your lunch and checking out this conversation. Thank youBye