introducing "the fourth place" & why "third places" have fallen short on their promise

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introducing "the fourth place" & why "third places" have fallen short on their promise<br>reflections from 1 year of building The Commons

Patricia<br>Sep 04, 2023

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This is a cross-post from Patricia Mou’s newsletter on her reflections after a year of running The Commons.

the OG third place: The School of Athens<br>I was once a “third space enthusiast”. However, if the original spirit of the phrase was that of a physical place, outside of home and work, where authentic community thrived and social fabric intertwined - than the majority of today’s third spaces fallen short of this noble ideal.<br>Thanks for reading The Commons! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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The spirit is not present in cafes brimmed with the clicking and clacking of laptops beneath hunched shoulders. Nor does it reside in a social or vocational club where favors are transacted and peacock feathers are unfurled. It is also not a bookstore, public space, library, gym, or bathhouse - where one bobbles in and out, amidst a sea of transient faces. Like empty calories, these interactions convey the veneer of community - yet ultimately leave us unsatisfied.<br>Spaces of this kind have their place in our lives, but we must be honest about what they are: a means to get one's needs met, against a backdrop of anonymous humans (with some occasional small talk speckled in). Unfortunately, Oldenburg’s vision for “the great good third place”, is only a shell of its original intention.<br>And maybe that’s okay. Perhaps third places like cafes, bars, salons, and the public spaces aforementioned, can continue existing as spaces with lite community vibes. But to illuminate a new category of community third spaces that strive to go deeper, we’ll need to create with more intention and concoct a new name.<br>Let’s call it the “fourth place.”<br>We have homes as first place, work as second place,  public spaces as third place, and communities for meaning-making, as fourth place.

Why “place” and not “space”? Space is about objective geography. It only becomes a “place” when it is overlaid with emotional attachment and subjective meaning. A meaning that is crystallized through webs of rich social relationships by which collective memories are forged. Why “fourth”? Well, four comes after three.<br>Fourth places, or communities for meaning-making, parallel the role that churches serve, but without the dogma and whole conversion business. As secularism becomes more predominant, church attendance dwindles, and meaning-making becomes privatized - places that engender collective sense-making of ourselves, the world, and how we fit in it - are more important than ever.<br>As such, meaning-making in a supportive and consistent community is crucial. One wherein friendships are engendered in what Aristotle extolls as their highest form - a virtuous communion between souls exploring and understanding their place in the universe in tandem.<br>Unlike community spaces like social clubs or churches, a place for meaning-making rests on its non-prescriptiveness. There are no required rites to perform, nor cloaks of identities to don. Rather, it’s a safe container to be illegible, know nothing for certain, and question everything. To fumble, experiment, and channel ourselves in the messy process of becoming.<br>Instead of giving people meaning, a fourth place incites the conditions by which people find their own meaning, together and alone.

Taking a step back from the drone of daily routines, we can finally connect to the yearnings and musings of the soul, a truer and more primary experience of ourselves than what ordinary consciousness can offer.<br>A journey that’s only becoming more prevalent as we become increasingly resourced to detangle our social conditioning and trauma, explore various philosophies & schools of thought for living, and craft our lives as an authentic expression of who we really are.<br>And so the question remains, how do we actually create more “fourth places”?

When Adi and I asked ourselves this question 1 year into building a “fourth place” in SF called The Commons, the answers still felt unclear. What started out as just wanting a community living room to vibe in with friends, quickly escalated into something more nuanced.<br>The influx of thousands of member applications, hundreds of community-led events via Campus, and a loyal foundation of members, signaled that a nerve had clearly been struck.<br>Whether it was getting at the loneliness epidemic, the rise in secular meaning-making, a desire for intellectual and emotional playfulness, a safe space to share burgeoning questions and curiosities, or just a place to co-work and vibe with interesting people - we weren’t quite sure. The most recurring feedback we’d get would be somewhere along the lines of “I feel like I'm in college again” and “I don’t have to be anyone here,...