Local spots

 What are the local gathering spots like where you live? 

In my community most shops and cafes are franchises: efficient and predictable, they nevertheless don't lend themselves to neighborliness like "third places" do. We need to connect with our neighbors in casual ways.

"Third places" are independent gathering spots having walls cluttered with notices of lost pets and local sports teams, noisy, full of personality, menus of local favorites, all looking like the neighborhood. 

America used to have more of these. "People mixed across generational and economic lines where you could overhear a conversation wildly different from your own, where children learned to behave in public, and where adults remembered the value of showing up and being present. They were unpretentious, inexpensive, and abundant. And because they belonged to their neighborhoods, they carried meaning."

Understanding and trusting neighbors is "social capital." We need it in America, and it's been declining. "Social capital does not regenerate itself—it is produced in spaces where people encounter one another with regularity and low stakes. When those encounters disappear, people stop learning how to share space with those unlike themselves, and difference begins to feel threatening rather than ordinary."

Ideas to enable more third places . . here.

from AEI