Third Places, part 2.

Essential ingredients for well-functioning third places:

1. They must be free or quite inexpensive.
2. Food and drink, though not absolutely essential, are important factors.
3. They must be highly accessible to neighbourhoods so that people find it easy to make the place part of their regular routine.
4. A lot of people should be able to comfortably walk to the place from their home.
5. They should be places where a number of people regularly go on a daily basis.
6. They should be places where people feel welcome and comfortable and where it is easy to enter into conversation.
7. A person should expect to find old and new friends on each trip to the place.

Frost says: "You can understand why businesses such as Starbucks have latched on to this concept. They have invested greatly in seeking to be a third place for American culture, knowing that it can be very lucrative for a business to be seen this way."