The term “third place” was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989 to describe spaces outside the home and workplace – such as cafés, pubs, libraries, and parks – where people gather to form meaningful social connections. These informal social hubs are essential to building community cohesion, combating social isolation, and fostering civic engagement. Historically, they’ve been the glue that holds neighbourhoods together: physical spaces where relationships are formed, ideas are exchanged, and communities are strengthened.
But in today’s rapidly evolving world, the traditional third place – especially in its brick-and-mortar form – is under threat. Rising costs of living have made local cafés and pubs less accessible, while public libraries and community centres have suffered from years of underinvestment. The COVID pandemic further accelerated a shift towards digital interactions, redefining how people connect. Increasingly, communities form around shared interests in virtual spaces – from YouTube crafting channels and WhatsApp civic groups to gaming worlds like Fortnite and Roblox.
So what should our response be?
The common reaction is to call for more and better physical third places – revamped libraries, upgraded parks, arts venues or new community halls – to fix the problem of social isolation. While these investments can be valuable, this approach risks being a one-dimensional response to a multi-layered problem. It assumes that physical space alone can rebuild fractured community ties, without acknowledging how people’s lifestyles, work patterns, and communication habits have transformed.
The answer lies in developing platforms – digital spaces and tools that reduce fragmentation, foster connection, and build long-term local engagement. In this model, engagement with place doesn’t just happen inside four walls, but through online and offline experiences that reflect the way we live today. It’s also worth remembering that traditional third places come with a hefty price tag.
Building and maintaining physical community infrastructure requires significant investment. In the UK, the most prominent example in recent years is the Towns Fund, which distributed £3.6bn between 2019 and 2021 to 101 towns as part of a competitive process to encourage local economic growth and community renewal. But how effective has it been?
An interim report (October 2024) suggests that impact has been difficult to measure due to lack of monitoring data. This reveals a deeper issue: a failure to build the kind of digital infrastructure that allows for transparent, measurable, and adaptive investment. What if even a small percentage of the Towns Fund had been allocated to building shared data standards and the digital rails necessary for community engagement? What if we could actually track how people participate, what works, and where improvements are needed – in real time?
This is where the idea of “Community-as-a-Platform” emerges. Imagine a form of digital infrastructure that doesn’t work on behalf of corporate shareholders, but on behalf of local people – offering tools for participation, measurement, collaboration, and shared ownership.
People want more agency in shaping the places where they live, work, and gather. They don’t just want to attend a community workshop, they want a stake.
Emerging technologies like blockchain can underpin this model. While often associated with finance or speculative crypto markets, blockchain’s real potential lies in its capacity to enable trust, transparency, and decentralised ownership.
Imagine a local platform where residents can vote on neighbourhood plans, contribute to decision-making, or even co-invest in local projects using digital tokens. These tokens could represent ownership in a community café, shares in a local solar project, or votes in participatory budgeting processes. Because blockchain creates an immutable record of transactions and governance, it could provide a secure and accountable foundation for these experiments.
For example, smart contracts could automate how shared spaces are managed, rented, or maintained – removing red tape and increasing transparency; Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) could allow communities to co-own and co-govern local assets with clear rules and accountability; and, tokenised incentives could reward civic participation, from volunteering to event organising – turning engagement into a tangible, shareable value.
These technologies aren’t magic solutions, but when applied thoughtfully and ethically, they could support a new social and economic model for place-making – one that is decentralised, participatory, and inclusive by design.
The real opportunity is to build a new civic infrastructure that blends physical and digital, bottom-up and top-down, ownership and access. Rather than simply replicating past models, we can reimagine what a “third place” means in the 21st century.