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The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
DIAMOND
RATING
RATING
Ray Oldenburg, Marlowe & Company, 1999
Senteo’s Review 
A sociological study of what the author refers to as “The Third Place”, or a community enhancing place that comes just behind the home and workplace in terms of time spent, but which is essential as a complement to work and domestic lives.
The author sets out by first studying the social benefits of these places in American society, how they serve as spontaneous meeting grounds for daily neighborhood interactions in creating viable communities. He then presents an analysis of international equivalents – the German-American beer gardens, Main Street, the English pub, the French café, the American tavern and classic coffeehouses, along with what made each of them unique. In the final section, he analyzes the forces which have led to the destruction of these important places – suburban sprawl, automobile culture, technology (television, computers, iPods), separation of sexes and shutting out youth. The book concludes with suggestions for restoring these endangered places to society.
This book provides a thought-provoking analysis of third places and the impact of their absence on society. The author conducts a thorough sociological analysis from a historical perspective, analyzing the necessary components of the third place, as well as providing some suggestions to restore them. He also avoids some of the temptations of blaming it solely on technology of recent years, recognizing that this dynamic has been influenced by a confluence of factors since World War II, such as the automobile, suburbanization, detachment in terms of proximity to the work place, etc.
The author to some extent lays out a prescription that the demise of third places needs to be addressed from a social planning standpoint, while the formation of such third places throughout history was more a natural function of the co-location of home and work as well as the absence of other distractions such as technology or 24/7 work environments. Perhaps social planning in the modern world is one way to recreate these places, however the effectiveness of such prescriptions is questionable, and only to be addressed in another book, as the final chapter is far too short and does not really address solutions in a methodical way.
“The Great Good Place” argues that “third places” – where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation – are the heart of a community’s social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.
This book is an essential sociological study in “third places” and their importance to society and even viable democracies. It should be of high interest to sociologists, architects, planners or marketers. The underlying elements which enforced the third place in society certainly have applications for the marketer seeking to create an environment of belonging or identification, however from a methodology standpoint the marketer may find this analysis somewhat thin.
Senteo Subject Category
This book provides good research into “third places” from a sociological and historical perspective. The author makes some suggestions as to possible ways to go about restoring this endangered environment, however no methodology or firm framework.
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