Ray Oldenburg loved making lists, mostly about the benefits of third places. I am organizing my chapter on “How We Lost Our Way” and decided I could make a neat list as a way to sort out the material. These things are not, in themselves, necessarily bad. Many are good. But each has contributed to the decline of genuine third places, or muddled up the subject so much that people have lost sight of what Ray worked so hard to bring to our attention.
1945-1990
1 Cars & highways
2 Zoning & other government regs
3 National chains
4 Television
5 Air-conditioning
After 1990
1 Starbucks
3 Placemaking
3 Bowling Alone
4 Virtual community
5 Libraries/government projects