Third places: an option for reconfiguration work-community relations?

ABSTRACT

This text addresses one of the terms applied to describe spaces of experimentation, namely third place. This concept refers to new places that connect the functions of working, living, and socializing. These three functions had been separated by capitalism under a Fordist mode of regulation. However, since the 2000s, various space-based initiatives have reunited them. In this context, third places represent reference points for community life that favor broader and more creative exchanges at the local level and thus help to maintain sociability, especially in the post-COVID-19 era. Third places offer the opportunity to rethink the link between the workplace and mobility, to review spatial planning practices, and to re-examine the relationship between the local and the global.