What if I told you that having absolutely no community third spaces is a result of car dependency?
Ever heard people complain that it’s impossible to just meet new people in real life because everyone everywhere is busy? It’s because we don’t have third spaces anymore, and one really big reason for that is car dependency. People really don’t like to drive, for the most part, and they’re generally not going to go drive to hang out somewhere; it becomes both dangerous and a special pain in the ass if alcohol enters the equation, as it does for many (but not all) third spaces. In short, if people go to a third space, it’s usually going to be one inside their own hyper local community or they won’t bother. These are all generalities, of course; miss me with anecdotal exceptions. Well, we keep our cities badly zoned and low density so that you don’t really have hyper local third spaces, you just get weird, semi-local, sanitized big box “third spaces” (massive sarcasm quotes) like Chili’s or Starbucks that don’t actually fill that role. They just want you to spend money and get out, there’s no actual tie to the community.
Having an outdoors that’s so utterly lifeless and hostile to anything that’s not a car that kids “hang out” on social media is neither normal nor desirable, unless you’re a tech exec, I guess.
What if I told you that having absolutely no community third spaces is a result of car dependency?
Then I’d suggest that if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem is going to look like a nail.
Like, I get it, fuck cars, but North American culture has been car dependant while having history of having the some of the highest third space membership, even in my own lifetime. While I accept it as a factor of the erosion, it’s unlikely to even be the primary factor.
Yeah a big part of third space culture where I grew up was things like “let’s go to x” followed by six people getting in a car with two seatbelts because the nearest “x” was like 20 miles away. And the car itself could be a meeting place if someone who barely interacts with your group hears about a trip and asks to jump in the car too
Yeah that works great assuming you have an already-established friend group within walking distance and parents that either have the time and will to chauffeur you around everywhere, or friend’s parents willing to do so with your own parents giving you the “freedom” to be driven around by people that are more than likely near-to-complete strangers to them. Which, in the age of helicopter parents, is a dying breed, and the first option almost completely excludes children of young, single, low-income, and otherwise struggling parents.
The decline in religion is more responsible for lack of third spaces than car centric cities.
That can be more or less true depending on the community. I imagine in the central and southeastern US, the decline of religion has been especially devastating in that regard. However you don’t see that pattern replicated in much more secular western Europe. In fact, they’re doing just fine for third spaces.
You must be an alcoholic.
I actually love to drive and wish I had a car to get to the games shop in a reasonable fashion for D&D or MTG where I’m only really expected to spend money for tournament entry because kicking ass isn’t free.
Barely touch the stuff myself, but I do consider myself practical. A lot of people like to drink in social settings, that’s neither endorsement nor criticism, but reality. I prefer taking my bike or walking so much more than driving, and it regularly bothers me that anywhere I could want to go is out of range or impractical/unsafe to reach by bike or pedestrian infrastructure. I don’t like driving, I find it expensive, a general pita, dangerous, ecologically damaging (not just CO2, driving just one kilometer can produce up to a trillion microplastic particles in the form of tire dust), and just really not that fun. But hey, to each their own. I just kinda wish we hadn’t built our urban environments to the exclusion of everyone but drivers.
We didn’t built our environments to exclude specifically non-drivers. We are all competing and driving is simply a massive advantage. It also means that places generally don’t have to be super close together to have business traffic and therefore benefit more from cheaper real estate.