The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

The author points out that commercial space has destroyed our "communities". Even the "invisible hand of the market" which Adam Smith hoped would usher us toward greater social harmony, has failed to do so. [223] Smith did not foresee how "weaponized" by greed the private corporations would become.
Oldenburg is an academic who writes in popular psychology. I loved the title with "Great Good Place", because it invokes the ecclesia of Christ who tells us that the church is our savior: We all know what Heaven on Earth is, and sometimes we get quite close to it. He cites Georg Simmell as the expert on "human sociability" and systemic dynamics.

Oldenburg unwraps the details, exposing the diversity across cultures and places, and showing how show more America has lost gathering places for good company and conversation. Our taverns are declining although drinking has increased.

Paris has sidewalk cafes, London its pubs, Vienna its coffee houses, German its bier gardens, Japan its tea houses, and America once had its Main Street. After probing the bistros and bars, Oldenburg documents the fact that in 1989 the heart of community vitality is being torn out of America. The "great good place" is now gone. We no longer have a social way to avoid idiots. This observation seems prescient looking back from the disasters of 2016-2020.

This book is more than mere documentation, it is also insightful and provides a good basis for ventilating the implications for futurists, the democratic republic, and its religious values. Oldenburg does not mention "Disneyland" or the Wal-mart destruction of rural and urban America, nor does he compass the Internet or the possibility of "virtual communities" of individuals addicted to the preposterous clicks of emoticons. He does comment on the popularity of boules in the cafes, and how the most entertaining games get the most interest. [31] show less

Few books have had greater influence on the way we perceive communities, community-building, and collaboration than Ray Oldenburg's "The Great Good Place." The terms he introduces have become part of our lexicon: the first place (home), the second place (work), and the third place--the great good place, which is where we meet, socialize, share ideas with, and learn from friends and acquaintances who become part of our personal and extended community. In the first part of his book, Oldenburg describes the history of the third place in America, explores the character of third places, and outlines the "personal benefits" and "greater good" resulting from nurturing and sustaining third places--a tremendous antidote to cynics who claim there show more no longer is a commitment to the idea of public goods. "My interest in those happy gathering places that a community may contain, those 'homes away from home' where unrelated people relate, is almost as old as I am," Oldenburg writes at the beginning of his book (p. ix), and his obvious love and admiration for and commitment to those places serves as inspiration for anyone trying to justify a commitment to community and collaboration. show less

Great read for library professionals.

Great read for library professionals.

Great read for library professionals.

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