Corrupting the youth 2021

 

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(Source: coe.edu; used without permission)

This fall I will be teaching in Coe's first-year experience program, which provides an introduction to the liberal arts mindset with interdisciplinary courses and a whirlwind of activities. My go-to course in the program is A Sense of Place; it is pursuing this subject matter over the years that led me to urbanism, and that has led me to you. So, yay FYE, even if I do suspect it is trying to kill me with complication.

This year, we will be focusing on third places, mostly by reading the classic The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg (Da Capo, [1989] 1999). Along the way, we will do three writing assignments, which I summarize here in the hopes of ginning up some feedback from you, faithful reader.

Paper 1: Reflective Essay

In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg describes a number of qualities of third places, as well as various benefits they provide individuals and communities. You might be thinking that no place could possible combine all of these qualities, and you'd be right. Real-world places at best approach the qualities of ideal-types.

Write an essay about a place you know well that has some of the qualities of a third place as described by Oldenburg. How well do its qualities match the characteristics Oldenburg attributes to third places? In what ways does it differ?

1271 1st Avenue SE, July 2020

Paper 2: Creative-Argumentative Essay

Now that you're familiar with the arguments for third places, turn your mind to a property near campus that served as a third place for many Coe faculty and students from 2000 until it closed in March 2020. What should go into the former Brewed Awakenings, and why? 

Use your imagination to consider how this building might be used for a successful business that would be a gathering place for Coe students. Then, make an argument for your idea.

Paper 3: Documented-Argumentative Essay

In the last several years, there have been a large number of projects that attempt to (re)build communities capable of supporting the sorts of third places we've been plugging in this course. This assignment asks you to identify one project that could be adapted to a town you know well.

Browse some of the following sites, and find an example of a project that would benefit your town. (I include links to Project for Public Spaces, Better Block, Human Transit, Reinventing Parking, The Urbanist, The Scenic Route, and Retrofitting Suburbia.)

With the help of the reference librarians, look for additional resources on that project. Then, write a 4-6 page paper, explaining the project, and then how a similar project would help your town.

Better Block project in Cedar Rapids, spring 2018
(photo by Ben Kaplan)

These three writing assignments should enable to students to engage with Oldenburg's concept of the third place as well as third place-friendly design projects, and to imagine their application to familiar territory.

Fellow lovers of cities and/or coffee, what do you like about these assignments? More importantly, what do you see as missing that would help newcomers to these ideas?

SEE ALSO: 

"My Letter to the First-Years," 12 July 2016

"Out of the Mouths of Babes," 23 April 2019