why third spaces are sacred

Already in the 1800s, brands were quick to seize the burgeoning urban landscapes as fertile grounds for reaching an expansive audience, a strategy later employed by brands such as Coca-Cola with their iconic billboards at the beginning of the 20th century.

Hand in hand with the evolution of humans and their quintessential living space, brands today... See more

“Community is not something you have, like pizza. Now is it something you can buy. It's a living organism based on a web of interdependencies- which is to say, a local economy. It expresses itself physically as connectedness, as buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or... See more

After all, cities are where people are supposed to have serendipitous encounters—as the writer and critic Jane Jacobs said, “The metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” By comparison, the cliché goes, people become more atomized the farther they move from urban environments into the clinical, safe,... See more

Part of the reason for the shift is that over the course of the 20th century, leisure started to become privatized. Rich Heyman, an American studies professor at the University of Texas told "The Atlantic" that, "As living conditions improved, people chose to sit with their nuclear families in front of televisions." But I guess at least the family

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these days, the art of hanging out seems to be waning in cities.

A new trend is sweeping through China's first-tier cities — the "homebar." Imagine a cozy living room where strangers gather, break the ice, and enjoy a relaxed drinking experience. It's not as noisy as a bar, nor as posh as a quiet lounge, but something uniquely in-between.

Born in Shanghai and spreading to cities like Beijing and Hangzhou,... See more

Studies have shown that just having a diversity of folks in your life ... more informal and infrequent and unplanned, can be really protective for health and well-being,” Finlay says. “Classically, third places were sites where you could build up these bridging ties.”