Did you mean to reply to a different comment? The trick is not to have socializing be a destination. It ought to be a byproduct of normal life. In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters and we’re all acting confused as to why people can’t build relationships.
> The trick is not to have socializing be a destination.
The trick of the third place is that it is a destination. But perhaps you are recognizing why the third place is difficult to support: There are a million other places to socialize. A destination isn't necessary.
> In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters
Why not? Hell, just last night I was driving my car and noticed the aurora, so I stopped to look at it, and then someone else came along and stopped too. We had a good 20 minute chat before parting ways. Without cars, I would have probably been at home and probably wouldn't have talked to anyone.
A third place is difficult to support because people don’t want to go there to socialize with people they don’t know. That’s the whole point! Neighborhood pubs are great because you run into the same people you run into in various other parts of your life. When you meet someone at the grocery store you can say “I’ll be at the pub later if you wanted to come by” and that is a low stakes invitation both to offer and to accept.
You need loose connections to make a third place functional whatsoever, and those loose connections cannot emerge when everyone is going from steel box to drywall box to steel box.
Your example is a great argument but not for the point you’re trying to make. People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment. It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
> A third place is difficult to support because people don’t want to go there to socialize with people they don’t know.
People prefer to socialize with those they know, but you have to start somewhere. That's where the third place is an effective tool and the neighbourhood pub is, indeed, especially great for that because, if all else fails, the bartender will talk to you. And the bartender will introduce you to other patrons and get the conversation started. That's their job!
However, it is clear that the neighbourhood pub is also a dying breed. I expect in large part because parents are now hyper focused on the activities of their kids and using that time with other parents as their own social life. Additionally, young adults are now going to college, which brings its own social venues. That leaves a small gap between college and having kids, and maybe a small gap as one enters into retirement (although I would argue that this group is still fairly well served in the third place arena), along with a small segment of the population who remain childless, which doesn't leave all that many people to even support a third place realistically. These days there are an endless number of places to socialize, creating much fragmentation. A third place struggles when you find such fragmentation. It turns out that third places are more appealing when one third place has 20 people in it rather than when 20 third places each have one person inside.
> People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment.
Yes, you captured my point well. Cars don't change this. More often than not they will get you to that low stakes environment.
> It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
The natural event may have been somewhat rare (although not all that rare around here), but stopping the car wasn't particularly rare. Unless I'm on a determined mission where nobody is getting in my way, ventures out in the car usually lead to meeting other people. And when I'm that determined, I'm not stopping while out walking either, so it's not the car that is significant.
