2008 - A Third Place Sort of Place: A Case Study on Girard Street Park in Columbia Heights, Washington, DC
People are social; they enjoy spending time in the company of others in a supportive physical environment. In Sociologist Ray Oldenburg's seminal work, The Great Good Place, he describes every society's need for places where people can experience social interactions that occur outside the home (the first place) or work (the second place). This concept of the third place, what he calls the "Great Good Place," are those places that provide "the core settings of informal public life...that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work."
Value of third places
Arguably, American society needs more third places, or at least more vibrant third places. Some would argue further that America needs more of these places in order to help build community and grow civicallyminded, active and responsible citizens. Roughly, the argument is this: citizens who are active in neighborhood social life gain social capital and create networks from these associations and activities; these networks both enable and make citizensmore likely to be active in or care about what occurs in the larger community. This paper does not develop this line of argument. Instead, this paper presents a case study of Girard Street Park in order to analyze a public space and its uses and the social interactions among its users.
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- Peter Witte
Individual Papers - Fall 2008