Landscape Wallpapers Blog

Snowboarding Place

Install as Wallpaper it’s safe

In most places the snowboarding season is finishing.

Books about our places:

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community book:
Examines gathering places and reminds us how important they are. People need the ‘third place’ to nourish sociability.
The Great Good Place is a classic in the sociological literature on the social and cultural geography of American Culture. Taking it’s place alongside The Road to Nowhere, much of Christopher Lasch’s work and the writings of other distinguished students of the decline of place in America, Oldenburg’s work is in many ways better than these precursors because he shows how and why we were on the way to creating a placeless culture even before the computer revolution exacerbated the tend. The wholesale and largely uncritical acceptance of the automobile, place-hostile zoning ordinances, and puritanical meddling have conspired to produce a culture which is rapidly extinguishing haunts and hangouts–the sort of real places of pure sociability which contribute so much to the quality of life and which Oldenburg sees missing in the narrow, money-grubbing, time-driven culture of late century Americans. His analysis of the English Pub, the German Beer Garden, the Viennese coffee house, and other authenic places brings a much needed antidote to the depressing sameness that is characteristic of the increasingly McDonalized society in which we live.
Author calls community enhancing places “third” places because they fall just behind the home and workplaces in terms of time spent, though in his estimation are no less important. They are a necessary complement to domestic and work lives. He discusses the general nature of “third” places, as well as specific examples, including European pubs, sidewalk cafes, and coffee houses. Several characteristics are generally found in “third” places. The places are inclusive; titles and status are checked at the door. They are usually unpretentious buildings without a lot of distractions that detract from conversation and camaraderie. The same-sex nature of most such places eliminates self-conscious formalities of dress and behavior. According to the author, one could hardly exaggerate the benefits that both individuals and communities derive from gathering in “third” places.
There will be no return to main streets in small towns and urban neighborhoods associated with manufacturing where the residents worked and associated with each other on and off the job. Today’s reality is the complete divorce of place of residence from workplace locales, not to mention the 24/7 nature of work with extended hours. Workplaces can and do take on some of the characteristics of the author’s “third” places, though his caution concerning power differentials in workplaces is not to be taken lightly.
The book is thought-provoking. The author captures well that we are encapsulated in our private worlds with only marginal means to connect with others, unlike the easy sociability that once existed in some places. However, his emphasis on looking longingly at communities of the past will help little without accompanying suggestions about how to turn around our social structure. The author really does little of this.
Not giving in to pessimism and despair himself, Oldenburg offers wise and witty prescriptions for how we can turn this around and once again produce a “Great Good Place.” His thesis is that we have produced this environment–we can produce a better one. This is social science at its best, and with this new paperback edition just published, it should be accessible to more readers than ever.

The Experience of Place: A New Way of Looking at and Dealing With our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside book:
Tony Hiss’s lively book takes a considered look at a variety of landscapes, from New York’s Central Park to the Great Plains, and points out why the design of some places gives us the creeps, while that of others liberates our senses. Hiss suggests how cities and suburbs can be shaped to keep (or rediscover) their connection to the natural landscape, and, more important, how–for once–our expansion into a place need not mean its destruction. There’s much food for thought in The Experience of Place, and a dozen starting points for the reinhabitation our lands require.

The photo was also published as Autochanging Online Wallpaper.

(CC) Some rights on the image are reserved by Garrulus.