This concept of third places has been on my plate for a long time. It  
first came up when I published a weekly newspaper in a remote place  
and I was trying to figure out stories deep underneath the stories and  
what glued the people and place together- how that worked and what it  
yielded. Years later, for my graduate project in community and  
regional planning, I took it up again. The short version of my topic  
was how tourism ruins local economies because economic developers do  
not look at local knowledge and etc. There are parallels in the Haiti  
situation only the pillaging has been more blatant. I can report there  
is not a lot of support for scholarship that goes gadfly. My topic was  
not well-received. Bowling Alone and Putnam's work is on topic but, in  
my opinion, a bit fluffy. That's where my dept. was stuck then.

Some towns simply don't have true third places. I live in one that has  
anemic versions only. That's one reason I like BP.

-- Sister Mary Probation

ps sorry for not trimming this time.
----------------------------------
Mary Tegel
hands on impresario
Tegel Design + Planning
----------------------------------

On Jan 18, 2010, at 2:23 PM, Gabriel Orgrease <[log in to unmask]>  
wrote:

> On 1/18/2010 4:37 PM, Mary wrote:
>> BP is a Third Place. It's not vanishing any time soon!
>> http://www.plannersweb.com/wfiles/w184.html
> Mary,
>
> Wow, this is cool.
>
> BP started up w/ a confluence of factors but one of them was that  
> about that time I was reading Bowling Alone.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone This seems to have become  
> a classic in the field of social community.
> It also came about,  in my mind, as an experiment in development of  
> virtual community. The subscribers have shaped the vessel.
> Though it has always remained a small group over time it has had  
> some very interesting and usually positive results.
> It has never been just about old buildings, it is a whole lot about  
> sustaining our human spirits with a common interest in heritage  
> spaces.
> Even for the background lurkers.
>
> Probation?
>
> ][<en
>
> --
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>
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