A Case For Living Closer To Your Friends

And creating a community of third places

In 1989, a sociologist called Ray Oldenburg wrote about the third place, which refers to a space that is separate from the two traditional social environments of home (‘first place’ and work (‘second place’). Historically these third places might have been churches, gyms, libraries, bookstores, parks, clubs or even stoops (a personal favourite). He argued that third spaces were important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement and establishing a sense of place.

As a kid I can recall various ‘third places’ that I would regularly spend time in. The swimming pool where I took lessons; the gymnastics studio where I would train three times a week; a youth orchestra at the same school up in Rutland where I’d go every summer from the age of 12-16. As I got older it was Uxbridge shopping centre where we were finally allowed to roam free without the supervision of parents, spending our time browsing the rails of Topshop and sitting in Starbucks eating tuna melts and ordering various saccharine frappuccinos.

Eventually we graduated from shopping centres and park benches to bars and clubs, the ritual of sports nights on a Wednesday, late night pizzas at The Firehouse in Exeter and various friends houses where we’d lay our hungover heads the next day, a roast in the oven, more cheap wine on the table.

Third places have been disappearing, only to be replaced by the internet and social media which is where many of us go to socialise these days. The pandemic didn’t help things, putting an end to human interaction for a while, forcing us to recreate strange pub quizzes on Zoom and keep up with each other through Instagram and TikTok. It did, however, give many of us the impetus to reignite social relationships when the world opened up again. After being starved of shared experiences, once it felt safe to do so, our appetite to spend time together, to regroup, to gather in third places again, has grown exponentially. For a while our lives were small. We want them to get big again.

I watched a girl talk about this on TikTok (I like to think of this as my second and a half place) and I read comments like, “omg I think my third place is target”, but also ones that speak more to a wider social shift like the cost of living crisis. “I pay a lot for my first place that I don’t mind it being my second and third,” one person wrote; “third spaces and hobbies are unfortunately expensive,” said another; a doctor wrote, “the problem is a lot of people can’t afford to go to most 3rd places on a regular basis, because they can barely afford to live.

So where are all the third places now? The internet? What feels like a space to socialise, even to date, has actually becomes a space to isolate ourselves further from human connection and intimacy. Our increasing obsession with productivity has also taken away from our ability to create third places. As Allie Conti writes, “the ersatz third place is a consequence of a culture obsessed with productivity and status, whose subjects might have decent incomes but little recreational time.”

The pandemic proliferated this, but as we’ve emerged out the other side, the need for physical third places has become more urgent. Luckily we’re all aware of it and we can see third places popping up again in our lives.

Over the long sun soaked weekend, many Londoners might declare pubs as their third space, where friends gather over pints and packets of crisps in the beer garden, a collective exhale from a long winter. This has been true for me for even longer than just the weekend; I’ve truly never spent more time in pubs than I have in the past year. But lately my third place has existed between four points of a diamond shape on the map, stretching north to Stoke Newington, east to London Fields, west to Essex Road and south to Shoreditch. It’s within this comfortable walking distance that I’ve begun to understand how not to be lonely. 

Last month, Adrienne Matei wrote a piece for The Atlantic about why we should all consider living closer to your friends. “Wouldn’t it be great to have someone who could join me on a stroll at a moment’s notice?” she writes. “Or to be able to drop by to cook dinner for a friend and her baby? How good would it be to have more spontaneous hangs instead of ones that had to be planned, scheduled, and most likely rescheduled weeks in advance?” 

As a perennial planner, I felt that. I resent this prison of Type A personality that I find myself in, knowing that some people can be so nonchalant about seeing people. I try to make light of being the one who’s constantly booking people in, scheduling dinners and rearranging my calendar. But it’s honestly exhausting. I live alone so I’m aware that if I don’t make the effort, I might never see anyone. I love seeing those friends, but there’s also a level of low-level fatigue in catching people up on life’s happenings on a daily basis, of leaving one social interaction and going straight into another, of being restricted by reservations and timings and travelling across the city to make it work. 

Unstructured quality time with friends is replaced with a scheduled series of continuous catch-ups. Subsequently, these overscheduled people lack meaningful ties with their neighbors, and so they patronize spaces to make those connections even less frequently. – Allie Conti, The Forgotten Joy Of Hanging Out In Third Spaces

Recently, I’ve been spending more time with a group of friends who now feel like family. Each Sunday, a few of us take it in turns to host dinner. For the past four Sundays it’s been roast chicken (I cannot emphasise enough my belief in the roast chicken as a totem of community building), although tonight it will be lasagne which is a little diversion (admittedly it is Monday so anything goes). Even not on Sundays, there have been impromptu coffees, newly-rented house viewings, sun drenched bench sessions outside the shop and band practices. The other week I was in my friend Kelli’s house simply co-existing with her; sometimes not talking, me running a bath, her cleaning, me helping her cook a bolognese before I leave for dinner, not really saying goodbye because it’s just a given that I’ll see her the next day.

Meeting up would be a breeze if you didn’t have to travel as far to see one another. More than that, the proximity would make it easier to support one another materially and emotionally. Even just knowing that someone you cherish is near could be reassuring. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve become convinced: We should all live close to our friends.

For me, it’s this reassurance. It’s knowing that I don’t have to be alone if I don’t want to, which is hardly a novel idea, I know. But despite having many friends scattered across the city, I have found it difficult to know when and how and who to reach out to when I’m feeling sad or lonely. In this new group of friends, there’s a sense of mutual understanding that we actively want to drop in and see each other on a daily basis. This isn’t always the case. 

It’s made me think a lot more about what I consider the pyrrhic victory of being busy. I’ve always viewed being busy (read: hectic) as a sign of success – of having many friends, of being wanted, of belonging – but more recently it’s been making me feel increasingly more anxious. I don’t want to have all my time filled up. I don’t always want to cross the city multiple times a day and exist in two-hour time slots. I envy those who are able to just exist and move from place to place with ease, without meticulously planning every move, without feeling the need to book themselves into someone else’s life.

It’s why this tiny pocket of North London that has become my third place feels so warm and inviting. It requires little effort. It reaps big rewards. I’m rediscovering the joy of living locally. Of not marooning myself in my flat. Of bumping into people on the street and ending up spending the day with them. Of simply existing without having to try so hard. And god does it feel good not to try so hard! 

I’ve been feeling hugely fulfilled by this family dynamic. Perhaps it’s because I live alone; because I’m getting older; because I’ve always been in search of belonging; because chosen families are important; because I actually love being around kids; because seeing how a life spent in close proximity to good people who also want to see you all the time can feel so incredibly comforting. It reminds me of being back at university, but replace ‘cheap Sainsbury’s own brand Spanish wine’ with something more natural from Stokeys. Replace ‘toxic relationships’ with mutual respect and trust. It makes hangovers and heartbreak and good news and hardships infinitely better. 

It’s either kismet or pure luck that I live within a 10 minute cycle of this new group of friends. Sometimes it doesn’t feel close enough. Never have I been so happy to end up in third place.