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Urban design context:
Sources:
1. Oldenburg, R. (1999). The great good place: Cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community (3rd ed.) LOCATION: Marlowe &
Company
2. Oldenburg, R. (2007). The problem of place in America. In M. Larice & E. Macdonald (Eds.), The Urban Design Reader (138-148). LOCATION: Routledge
3. Soja, E.W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
4. Walters, B. (4 Feb 2015) “Closing time for gay pubs - a new victim of London’s soaring property prices”, The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015feb/04/cling-timegay-pubs-lgbt-venues-property-prices.
Case study:
Many, small, fragmented spaces
Multiple owners and operators
Lack of coordination and scalability
Good variety of uses
Inconsistent and inefficient use
Reliance on volunteers
No single advocate
No “one-stop shop” for information on spaces
The commoner
• Online social networking, insecure and transient housing,
and decline of third spaces have led to a decline in neighbourhood socialising in London’s commons
• Today’s commoner is busy and stressed
• Need for low cost activities, classes, IT, and social space,
no easy way to link up with these spaces
• More open to the sharing economy and flexible working
The system
• Assets of Community Value (ACV): Community groups can petition
for a place to become an ACV and bid for it if it is to be sold.
• Community Asset Transfer: Councils can transfer assets to community organisations in various ways including freehold, a long lease,
a shorter lease or a licence to occupy.
• Community Right to Reclain: Individuals can petition the Secretary
of State for Communities and Local Government to order disposal
of underused land.
• Current legal system relies on community groups to purchase and
run assets, often competing with large corporations
• No organisation clearly entrusted with protecting community assets
• Unequal protection of community assets as protection requires
empowered and well-funded community groups
The neighbourhood around Caledonian Road demonstrates the thirdspace environment found in inner London. It shows that in a given neighbourhood there are numerous thrid spaces that can be used as a “Commons” for the
local comunity as well as visitors. These range from local businesses, to community centres, to parks, and privately-owned but publicly used spaces such as Granary Square. The examples below are simply a sample and not a
comprehensive list of third spaces. Some of these spaces are already active third spaces while others have the potential to become better third spaces. Although the high number and density of potential third spaces is encouraging, their actual use is uneven and often inefficient. Community centres, of which there are plenty around the Cally, in particular may have limited hours due to reliance on volunteers or limited funds for staff to open and run
them. The thid spaces’ mixed-use and ownership lends itself to a lack of coordination and scalability. It also means that a person wishing to find out what is happening in these spaces would have to lookup and contact dozens
of organisations to have an understanding of what is on offer in the neighbourhood. With the regeneration of the Kings Cross area, the third spaces of the the Cally may also potentially come under threat from development. At
which point, there would be a need for greater protection of community assets than what the current system provides.
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2. Housman’s Bookshop
3. Drink, Shop & Do
4.Hugh Cubitt Community Centre
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5. The Old Laundry
6. Canal Museum
7. The Thornhill Arms Pub
8. Half Moon Cresecent Tenants
Co-Operative
9. Granary Square
10. Kings Place
11. Regents Canal
12. Blessed Sacrament RC
Church
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13. Lewis Carroll Children’s Library
14. Cally Resource Centre
17. Cally Pool and Gym
18. RIGPA Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre
15. Bemerton Art Studios
Thirdspace Trust
Advocacy & policy
•Increase
the profile of third
spaces and awareness of
their benefits
•Drive
changes to policy to
better protect third space
communtiy assets
Protection
• Democratic
nomination process and direct community
engagement to designate
protected third spaces
• Protect chosen assets
through puchase or rent
subsidies
communities and
organisations with the tools
and support to make the
most of their third spaces
https://www.thirdspacetrust.co.uk/spaces
Thirdspace Trust
Spaces
Search
community hall kings cross
Schedule of free activities:
Yoga
10-11am Tues, Thurs
Art class
9-10am Tues
Dance
10am-2pm Sat
Computer club
3-5pm Mon, Weds
Youth club
4-6pm Tues, Thurs
REGISTER
Community Centre
Rooms: 1
Facilities: Hall
Operator: Tenants association
Opening Hours: 5-9pm M-F
Contact phone: 12345671234
Contact email: hall@tenants.org
BOOK
UNmaking the
crisis of the
commons
Private grants and memberships
Organisational member dues
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Booking revenues from Trust-owned spaces
Online portal advertising revenue
•Provide
BOOK
Thirdspace Trust:
Funding: Tools & support
Community Centre
Rooms: 5
Facilities: Hall, cafe
Operator: Peabody
Opening Hours: 9-5 M-F
Contact phone: 12345671234
Contact email: comcentre@charity.org
The UNder-utilised
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The Context
We would argue that the rich and the more privileged members of the middle and working classes have made urban areas trendy
after a half-century of decline and are bringing suburban values and approaches to space to those sites. This is increasingly
documented in the privatisation of third spaces in London and closing of spaces for redevelopment or rent increases. Several
notable closings or threats of closings in recent months have included several gay venues, including the Joiners Arms in the East
End, and Madame Jojo’s in Soho4. CAMRA has reported that 29 pubs are closing every week across Britain (up from 16 pubs
per week in 20115), libraries are under threat from funding cuts and places like independent cafes, book and record stores, which
have traditionally been used as third spaces in Oldenburg’s sense, are under pressure. However, there is still a huge need for
third spaces in London and ways to protect them from the market forces that have increasingly taken the power over the commons from the commoners and placed it into the hands of large corporations.
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The space
English Heritage
National Trust
The Intervention
For Edward Soja, thirdspace has another meaning. Thirdspace is “a fully lived space, a simultaneously real and imagined, actual and virtual, locus of structure, individuality and collective experience and agency.”3 For Soja, Firstspace is real space, and
Secondspace is imagined. Thirdspace sits between these two perceptions of space. This concept of third space sits along side
Oldenburg’s theory of third space well, as both are about how a space is experienced, the real and the imagined, the physical
space and how the physical space interacts with its users. For Oldenburg, a third space must have certain physical as well as
imagined attributes which in turn makes it into a place where people feel and interact in a certain way with others in the space.
1. Kings Cross Station pavement
Precedents: The Chruches Conservation Trust
London’s current Thirdspace condition:
The concept of the “commons” is a place that sits between our private and work lives. They are spaces where everyone is welcome, where conversations can open, and people choose to be there. Ray Oldenburg, in The Great Good Place, describes a
space that sits outside of home (first space) and work (second space), a “third space” which can also be described as the commons. Attributes of third spaces according to Oldenburg, tend to be free, have food and drink, have “regulars”, are neutral (no
obligation to be there), levelers of status, a place for conversations, accessible and accommodating, are low profile, playful and
welcoming1. Here, the ownership of a space does not define it as a third space. Over time, Oldenburg thinks that third spaces
have become increased in number but have become smaller, as compared with the great public structures of ancient Rome or
Greece. However, Oldenburg argued that surbanisation has threatened the social life of communities as suburban landscaples
lack third spaces and encourage people to go straight from home to work in their cars, bypassing third spaces altogether2.
Non-profit trust
Businesses
Churches/religious groups
Housing associations
Local councils
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Structure: An intervention for London’s commons
by Brian Grady and Maria Vitale
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Organisational
members: Community groups
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Thirdspace Trust
The Thirdspace Trust is an organisational solution for
the commons that would providing advocacy, support and protection to third spaces and the commoners (local communities and visitors) that use them.
These assets provide essential space for learning,
democratic dialogue, socialising, and enjoyment.
Schedule of free activities:
Book club
Tenants meeting
Cinema club
English conversation
Thursday Tea
6pm Weds
7-9pm Tues
7-9pm Fri
6-7pm Mon
5pm Thurs
REGISTER
An ONLINE PORTAL of third spaces
allows members to advertise spaces for
private hire. Members advertise a minimum
number of hours of free access and
activities for the community in return.
The UNderrepresented
•A simple, unbureaucratic, democratic system to allow commoners to
nominate valuable thid space community assets
•Active engagement with and support for disadvantaged, under-represented and overlooked communities
to insure their third spaces are rec-
The UNcoordinated
We could really use money
for restorations.
The UNcommoner
•Encourage commoners to use their
third spaces through the online portal
• Enable commoners to become involved with, contribute to and support their third spaces and community through volunteering, tools,
training, and campaigns
The UNder threat
16. Light Project International
My art class has outgrown its space.
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We could really use
money
for restorations.
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20. Sunflour Bakery
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8
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19. Bingfield Park
21. Jean Stokes Community
Centre
22. Bemerton Children’s Centre
23. West Library
24. St. Andrew’s CoE Church
25. The Hemingford Arms pub
26. Nailour community gardens
27. Nailour Hall
28. The Breakout cafe
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•Identify under-used spaces and support them to increase their offerings,
capabilities and capacity in order
to provide additional access to third
spaces by commoners
•Help spaces promote their offerings
and space through the online portal
•Facilitate coordination between the
organisations/people that run third
spaces to scale up capabilities and
activities and promote efficient uses
of space
•Link spaces and people to meet the
needs of commoners and their spaces
•Protect designated third spaces that
are under threat from development,
rent increases or closure by purchasing them, enabling community
groups to purchase and run them or
by programmes to stablilise rent or
provide grants
•Campaign and advocate for third
spaces at a national level