We’ve all felt it. It’s the quiet that descends after school pick-up, when the street empties and everyone goes home, not to be seen again until school tomorrow morning. It’s the feeling of having great neighbours down the street but no natural place to bump into them or arrange regular plans. It’s the routine of finishing a kid’s soccer practice and facing the default option: everyone piles back into their cars and drives home.
Our homes are our “First Place”, where we end our day. Our workplaces (or schools) are our “Second Place”, typically where we spend a large portion of our day. But where are our “third places” in the suburbs, the places we see people we know outside of home and work?
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term Third Place to describe the informal, public gathering spots that are vital for building community. Third places are the anchors of our social lives: the coffee shops, pubs, libraries, community centres, and even park plazas where we can connect, unwind, and build the bonds that transform a collection of houses into a genuine community. They are the essence of the vibrant, walkable towns we love to visit on vacation—a key part of the “Vacation Paradox” so many of us experience, even if we’re not aware of it.
For decades, the design of suburbs like Orleans has systematically included fewer and fewer third places per household, and this means that these kinds of places are almost necessarily distributed inequitably. You may be lucky to have these kinds of places nearby, but otherwise you’re risking your life biking in traffic, wasting your time on inefficient and underfunded transit, or choking the planet driving for every tiny need in your life.
By separating every land use in an exclusionary way—homes here, shopping there, offices way over there—we’ve designed out most of the possibility for spontaneous community. Our zoning bylaws have made it illegal to have a small corner store or cafe within walking distance of most homes. The result is a landscape that is socially isolating by design. We have an abundance of private backyards with high fences or dense hedges, but a deficit of common ground and public space.
This is not just a social problem; it’s an economic one. A single-story business surrounded by a sea of asphalt for parking generates a fraction of the tax revenue of a more traditional, walkable commercial block, yet it demands the same expensive city services to run and maintain it.
But what if we started building our community around finding our third places?
This isn’t a radical vision. It’s the goal behind this site, and ongoing advocacy for zoning reform . Allowing for “gentle density” and low-impact commercial uses in our neighbourhoods isn’t about turning Orleans into a downtown or even mid-town; it’s about decriminalizing the gradual, organic evolution of our neighbourhoods . It’s about making it legal to build the very things that create community.
Imagine taking your child to the local ice cream shop after a bike ride on a summer day. Picture a neighbourhood pub where you can meet friends and have a drink of two without organizing a carpool (and a DD). Envision a local coffee shop that becomes the de facto community living room. These are the building blocks of a “New Orleans.”
Creating these spaces is the tangible outcome of the “less car” philosophy. They provide the destinations that give us a reason to walk or bike in the first place. Building a more resilient and connected Orleans means more than just redesigning our roads; it means rediscovering the missing piece of our suburban puzzle. It means building back our third places.
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