Nationwide, more and more entrepreneurs are committing themselves to creating and running "third places," also known as "great good places." In his landmark work, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg identified, portrayed, and promoted those third places. Now, more than ten years after the original publication of that book, the time has come to celebrate the many third places that dot the American landscape and foster civic life. With 20 black-and-white photographs, Celebrating the Third Place brings together fifteen firsthand accounts by proprietors of third places, as well as appreciations by fans who have made spending time at these hangouts a regular part of their lives. Among the establishments profiled are a shopping center in Seattle, a three-hundred-year-old tavern in Washington, D.C., a garden shop in Amherst, Massachusetts, a coffeehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, a bookstore in Traverse City, Michigan, and a restaurant in San Francisco.
The landmark survey that celebrates all the places where people hang out--and is helping to spawn their revival A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Third places," or "great good places," are the many public places where people can gather, put aside the concerns of home and work (their first and second places), and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation. They are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of a democracy. Author Ray Oldenburg portrays, probes, and promotes th4ese great good places--coffee houses, cafes, bookstores, hair salons, bars, bistros, and many others both past and present--and offers a vision for their revitalization. Eloquent and visionary, this is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place--opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars, and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book.
Ray Oldenburg’s concept of third place is re-visited in this book through contemporary approaches and new examples of third places. Third place is not your home (first place), not your work (second place), but those informal public places in which we interact with the people. Readers will come to understand the importance of third places and how they can be incorporated into urban design to offer places of interaction – promoting togetherness in an urbanised world of mobility and rapid change.
Churches in the West are renowned for responding to the measured needs of the vulnerable within their communities. Yet what about those who present as self-sufficient? With no apparent or obvious needs? Whatever Happened to the Rich Young Man? The Church and the New Marginalized challenges the church to broaden its reach beyond welfare and to seek to engage with (what Foster calls) the New Marginalized (non-welfare demographic), those whose spiritual needs are just as great. Including two case studies within evangelical third place cafes, that are seeking to do just that, this book will awaken the church to embark on a broader vision.
Introduction : a brief history of the recent past -- The (near) death and life of postwar American cities : the roots of contemporary placemaking -- The roaring '90s -- Into the twenty-first century -- Growing place : toward a counterhistory of contemporary placemaking -- Producing place -- Creating place -- Conclusion : Placemaking is for people.
In this open access publication, the social cohesion of urban neighborhoods and their residents is examined, which is often viewed as vulnerable since increased mobility, individualization, wider socio-economic and demographic changes have fundamentally altered the basis for everyday social interaction in urban neighborhoods. Anna Steigemann gives scholarly attention to the concrete places where neighborly interactions still take place and to how these interactions affect local community building. She illuminates and explores the ordinary everyday interactions and social practices in and around shops and gastronomic facilities on a shopping street in Berlin-Neukölln, revealing how these businesses are important places where community is practiced, but also why they are increasingly threatened by commercial and residential gentrification.
We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L'Enfant's initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.
In The Soul of Place Michael Jones explores how our relationship with place aligns us with the underlying patterns of life. He does so through stories that ask: what is our experience of homecoming and how do we find our way there? What is our pattern of belonging - including our relationship with people and places - that we hold sacred? What are the conditions of regenerativity and craft that enable us to give birth to something new? How can our stewardship of what is alive within and around us awaken the mythic imagination? And how does this open a path for gathering together in a spirit of transformative celebration?
Women and shopping: why is it important? It’s important because as a business owner you’ve probably realized you’re missing a market segment for your product and you’re not sure who or why. It’s important because, as a CEO, you realize women have tremendous consumer spending power and are crucial to survival in the competitive retail industry in America. This book details facts that could help any retailer or product manager including: women control over $20 trillion in consumer spending; they are better educated; they have more financial power; they have greater decision making abilities; and they have more mobility than any previous generation. Consumer Behavior: Women and Shopping provides a fascinating insight into women’s shopping habits and motivations—their many choices about when and where to shop. Retailers and business managers need to understand a woman’s needs and wants in order to attract and maintain their business.
This research explores the cultural and theological complexities within the urban context as some of the most prominent societal realities shaping our cities today. Cities represent the convergence of identities, industries, and ideologies in a dynamic urban ecosystem of pluralism and globalization. Far more than just the incidental built environment that houses such phenomena, the city is a living, breathing organism with vital systems and infrastructure that function as a means of sustenance for its inhabitants. Ultimately, cities are a cultural reflection of our common humanity in all of its beauty and depravity. More specifically, this work critically examines the cultural and theological significance of the urban context as an exercise in missiological contextualization. Through a dialectical exploration of the locality of Seattle's Rainier Valley and the universality of the street comer, three different lenses are used to examine the intersection of faith and culture in the city. First, through developing a rnissional theology of cultural engagement, the themes of incarnation, confrontation, and imagination inform a theological posture that is conversant with urbanism. Second, an interdisciplinary method of urban exegesis that synthesizes the symbolic systems of urban semiotics and the missional theology of cultural exegesis is applied to particular settings in Seattle's Rainier Valley as a form of observing and interpreting urban communities. Third, an urban contextual theology that is situated inan environment of physical density, social diversity, and economic disparity emphasizes the necessity of engaging the city with theologies of place, neighbor, and community. In an effort to equip and empower the church and others to engage the city as thoughtful, missional people, this research seeks to cultivate a combination of critical observational skills in the urban context and a constructive understanding of the holistic Christian mission among the poor and disenfranchised in our urban communities. From the street comer in the ghetto to newly gentrified enclaves of hipsters, "street signs" are all around us; they point us in the right direction toward deeper understanding, alert us to the presence of injustice on the horizon, and draw our attention to the redemptive beauty of the city that is revealed in the light of the gospel.
