Picture a European city and tell me what you love about it. I can almost guarantee that, without even knowing it, you love the “third places”.
Picture a European city, your favourite European city, and tell me what you love about it. Picture Rome or Paris, Lisbon or Barcelona, Prague or Krakow.
A third place is a piazza or plaza, a city square. It could be a park. It could be a cafe, a barber shop, a bar, a church, a football field, even a mall.By Oldenburg’s definition, these third places need to be egalitarian, places a person of any socio-economic status could visit and feel comfortable.
Think about the layout of most Australian towns and cities. You have your central business district, where there’s a main street with all the shops, a few pubs, a shopping mall nearby with a Coles or Woolies. And then, in a totally separate area, you have the places people live, sprawling residential suburbs that often have no shops or cafes in them at all, sometimes not even a playground, just house after house, quarter-acre after quarter-acre. The Australian dream.
Elsewhere, the great third places of Australian cities tend to be natural attractions. We’re incredibly lucky to have beaches in most of our major centres; many cities have national parks too, or at least natural reserves in which residents can get out and enjoy the scenery. We have some beautiful, spacious parks.Maybe city planners saw these things and just didn’t bother with any of the man-made extras.
Malaysia Latest News, Malaysia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
One thing European cities do far better than Australia (except Melbourne)Picture a European city and tell me what you love about it. I can almost guarantee that, without even knowing it, you love the “third places”.
Read more »
Second terrifying Melbourne abduction and stabbing rocks MelbourneA man has been charged over the alleged abduction and stabbing of a person driving a rental car - the second incident in one week to rock Melbourne.
Read more »
This new Melbourne town of 14,500 residents is missing one key thingWhen Melissa Watt first moved into the Woodlea housing development in west Melbourne five years ago, there were a few show homes around and not much else.
Read more »
Meet the new owner of the worst house in one of Melbourne’s best suburbsEric Loi once worked for the architect who designed a home that was never finished. After buying the South Yarra block, now it’s his turn.
Read more »
City chaos reaches ‘one of the prettiest little towns in Australia’A multimillion-dollar calamity that devastated small businesses in Sydney is now playing out in a picturesque rural valley 400 kilometres away which is emerging as a food and wine tourism hotspot.
Read more »
My one-on-one with an infamous killer convinced me he murdered his financier wifeIt was the murder that scandalized New York.
Read more »