Third places, true citizen spaces In the 1980s, American sociologist Ray Oldenburg developed the notion of a "third place": a space for informal, free social [...]

The death of a place to sit. Mark Wilson writes about how fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and Taco Bell are getting rid of dining rooms, [...]

Covid Ruined Our Hangout Spots. Here’s How They Come Back. "A central component of a third-place social ecosystem is familiarity but not intimacy, says Karen Christensen, [...]

'Third places': The ways losing our local haunts hurts us. Later in the COVID-19 pandemic, Karen Christensen talked to BBC Worklife about how the merging [...]

"In It Together," WGBH Boston. Only a couple of weeks after the COVID-19 lockdowns began, Ray Oldenburg and Karen Christensen were interviewed about third [...]