should i buy The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores reviews

Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place, just issued in this paperback version, is a classic in the sociological literature on the social and cultural geography of American Culture. Taking it's place alongside The Road to Nowhere, much of Christopher Lasch's work and the writings of other distinguished students of the decline of place in America, Oldenburg's work is in many ways better than these precursors because he shows how and why we were on the way to creating a placeless culture even before the computer revolution exacerbated the tend. The wholesale and largely uncritical acceptance of the automobile, place-hostile zoning ordinances, and puritanical meddling have conspired to produce a culture which is rapidly extinguishing haunts and hangouts--the sort of real places of pure sociability which contribute so much to the quality of life and which Oldenburg sees missing in the narrow, money-grubbing, time-driven culture of late century Americans. His analysis of the English Pub, the German Beer Garden, the Viennese coffee house, and other authenic places brings a much needed antidote to the depressing sameness that is characteristic of the increasingly McDonalized society in which we live. Not giving in to pessimism and despair himself, Oldenburg offers wise and witty prescriptions for how we can turn this around and once again produce a "Great Good Place." His thesis is that we have produced this environment--we can produce a better one. This is social science at its best, and with this new paperback edition just published, it should be accessible to more readers than eveOldenburg's scholarship here is a little fuzzy -- while I found myself agreeing with many of his points, much of his evidence seemed anecdotal. His cross-cultural comparisons were interesting: the French cafe and the Austrian coffeehouse are institutions that seem, well, very foreign to Americans.
There are no substantive mentions of hair salons or bookstores in this work. I'm not sure how they slipped into the title.
On the whole, this work raises interesting questions about the decline of public life and public space in American culture. Oldenburg throws a number of darts at the suburbs and poor urban planning, but seems to spend more time lamenting the lost innocence of small-town America than thinking about the future and how things could be turned around. There's a lot of thought-provoking material here, and I think this work represents a good jumping-off point for further consideration and research. Drawn by the concept of a "third place" as described by this book and referenced elsewhere, I thought I'd read to find out what this was about. In the end, this was a fascinating and thought provoking book. Mr. Oldenburg posits that much of our societal ills today are resultant from a lack of free association. That is, the places where people congregate / hang-out are disappearing because of urbanization, industrialization, etc. One example, the German beer garden (and its descendant in the US with early German immigrants) as a family affair - as, economically, there didn't seem to be any reason for such an institution in an "American" community, this venue slowly disappeared or devolved into the bars we know today - focused on serving alcohol to the subservient and willing. In fact, Oldenburg points out, the beer served in the beer garden was weaker than what we know today because the point was not the beer - the point was the association and conversation within the community, among families.

As we move towards a "private property society" and focus on "property rights" as we seem to understand them, the ability to be social, without prior planning, is slowly eroding. Simultaneously, the places to "hang out" are disappearing as a consumer driven market seems desirous of generating the most profit for the fewest people (corporations). Because of a desire for inexpensive goods, a local business, owned and operated by nearby residents, is next to impossible - especially in the face of the mass market competition from large corporations.

I think Oldenburg hits the nail squarely on the head. As I drive around (in a car-based economy), it's increasingly difficult to find a place to "hang out" and/or become a regular. (1) Restaurants are driven towards specific time limit for customers in hopes of turning a larger profit by serving more customers; (2) American bars are not conducive because service deteriorates if you choose not to imbibe and those that also serve food follow (1); and (3) the notion of coffee shops not driven by 1 or 2 are few and far between. Even assuming that there are such places of the "third place" variety, it more often than not requires a car to get there (not to mention paying to simply park near a place).

Anyone interested in property rights, humans as a social animal, and the notion of a "community," should read this book. Have you ever wondered why the atmosphere in your local coffee shop is so special? Ray Oldenburg skillfully explains the "third place" theory. The book is relevant in both academic and non-academic settings. It is a great read. Oldenburg's book is full of history around the changing landscape of cultural institutions, namely the "3rd Place": the places of rest, relaxation, and socialization at the heart of community. His focus is primarily on Western/Caucasian 3rd places, and at times is a little too nostalgic. I would have liked to see him address more around redefining these places, especially around the issues of the urban/inner-city places.It is true that Oldenburg wants to retrieve the free association of groups that are intermediate between the naked individual and the state, and he probably does question whether the perceived rootless existence of the homosexual is conducive to the preservation of the old neighborhood. Certainly, he would not feel that we must overthrow all the old moral and religious associations to make way for the purely legalistic conception of social existence that liberals seem to want. I would think that a purely legalistic conception of social existence is not acceptable even to those who think to profit most by a manipulation of our legal apparatus. Tolerance is a virtue, and for the liberal it is the supreme virtue, but I want to do more than tolerate my wife. I want to desire her. The promotion of boys night out or girls night out is not the same as promoting a gang rape mentality or an artificial attempt to segregate. It is simply a recognition that men and women like to congregate as men and women just as humans congregate as humans and don't seek companionship with goats or sheep. Oldenburg can reasonably question whether what is new is what is desirable just as we can question whether what is based on might is right. Embracing the Madison Avenue advertising temporal unit of the decade as if it were a properly historical temporal unit is not to show a proper appreciation of time, and embracing the Madison Avenue inspired attack on our ability to say no is not to embrace a higher moral calling. In this book, sociologist Ray Oldenburg writes about the importance of "third places"- places of small-scale public assembly that are not homes or workplaces such as British pubs and Austrian coffeehouses. He describes a few examples, seeks to explain why such places are useful, and shows why some such places are more successful than others.

Oldenburg explains that such places provide a means of recreation that allows people to socialize without having to schedule in advance or suffer the stresses of more intimate friendships. And according to Oldenburg, third places benefit marriages, because good third places ensure that a marriage is not forced to bear 100% of the spouses' need of companonship. .

But I wonder if Oldenburg overstates the importance of third places. For example, in describing 19th-century German-American beer gardens, he notes that German immigrants were quite successful at creating third places, while other ethnic groups such as Irish and Jews were much less so. But in the long run, these groups fit reasonably well into the American fabric. So what difference does it make that their bars weren't as fun?

And what distinguishes the most successful "third places" from any bar or coffeehouse or shopping mall? It is here that Oldenburg is least coherent, perhaps because he is trying to describe the indescribable. Oldenburg suggests that third places proliferate "wherever human beings have settled [except] where planning and zoning disallows them." But when describing specific examples, he shows how fragile they are: for example, he writes that the German beer garden lost ground to less hospitable pubs because Americans "never seemed able to allow the concept of a good tavern."

And when describing the beer gardens and the American Main Street, he focuses on their lack of exclusivity, noting that they were able to accommodate all ages, and were able to accommodate nonpaying loiterers as well as paying customers. But he also suggests that pubs have been ruined by incompatible newcomers; for example, New York's McSorley's "faces its greatest threat in the form of college students who make meals of its cheese platters and take over the place at night." I'm not sure I see how these observations are consistent.

Having said that, Oldenburg sometimes is on target in describing what makes a place an adequate "third place" and what causes it to fail. For example, North American taverns often fail because of the sheer level of artificial noise designed to drown out, rather than to facilitate, conversation. One Toronto tavern I recently visited forced me to choose between an indoors saturated with loud pop music and an outside area saturated with panhandlers- neither of which a particularly welcoming prospect. Perhaps such a place is designed to help the solo drinker get drunk as quickly as possible. But Oldenburg points out that over the past few decades, bars have lost ground to homes as places for alcohol consumption, indicating that the would-be drunks prefer homes to bars.

Oldenburg concludes by tying the decline of "third places" to suburban sprawl; where taverns and similar alternatives are not within walking distance, the possibility of an unscheduled break wanes. But are urban, walkable neighborhoods more conducive to third places today? Or has the decline of third places affected more walkable places as well? I'm not sure Oldenburg has the answer. I'd read quotes from this book and references to it being influential in giving us the language of the 'third place' but it wasn't until I read it that I realised how valuable it is. Unlike many non-fiction books it just gets better and better with every page and finally ending with a staggering conclusion. If people understood how much we've lost in the areas of community living, we'd no longer be beating a path to psychologists, but to city planners demanding change in order to develop living neighbourhoods.

Living in a new housing area in Perth, Western Australia I experience daily the result of the isolation that results from having houses built like mini-fortresses crammed together away from any shops or community spaces. As Oldenburg says, it couldn't have been designed better by a car manufacturer to require reliance on vehicles to get anywhere.

I was disappointed to find only a single copy of this book in all the univeristy and state libraries in Western Australia. So I've ordered numerous copies to hand out to fellow community leaders and I hope that just maybe we might start to bring change for the benefit of subsequent generations.