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The Commons SF | Home outside of home
thesfcommons.com
introducing "the fourth place" & why "third places" have fallen short on their promise
Patricia Mouthesfcommons.substack.com
Campus provides a low-stakes way to “try on a new way of being”, learn with social accountability, and experiment without hard committing. Each quarter we ask our members for classes, events, bookclubs, or circles they want to host. Many use this opportunity as a chance to engage with an interest more deeply - both as a leader, constructing the cur... See more
Good spaces provide bonding and bridging mechanisms. The field of urban planning first introduced the concept of public spaces that bond or bridge. The former serves to aid similar individuals to meet and reinforce ties. The latter bridges diverse people together to coexist and broaden one another’s perspectives. What seems to be working for us is ... See more
Patricia Mou's The Commons, based in San Francisco, exemplifies the Fourth Space concept. It describes itself as “a place of pause between stimulus and response”, where individuals can explore meaning, question paradigms and grow within a supportive community fabric.
Fourth Spaces
Creating high density of not only people, but ideas and energy = serendipity and aliveness. Lewis Mumford writes that the primary purpose of the city is “to permit—indeed, to encourage—the greatest possible number of meetings, encounters, challenges, between varied persons and groups, providing as it were a stage upon which the drama of social life... See more