Fourth Spaces

The concept of “third places”, coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the late 1980s, refers to informal gathering places outside the home and workplace. Think coffee shops, bars, libraries, community centres – spaces that have traditionally served as hubs for social interaction and community building. 

But they are disappearing, according to a slew of recent reports, while the “art of hanging out” is also heading in the same direction. And when Starbucks says it’s “reclaiming the ‘third place’,” as mentioned in the New York Times, you know we’re really in trouble. 

The same article went on to quote Gwendolyn Purifoye, an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame: “Public leisure space is critical for society. If you don’t build places to gather, it makes us more strange, and strangeness creates anxiety.” 

However, as communities and their needs evolve, so do the spaces where it thrives. While traditional third places may be declining, a new concept is emerging: “fourth spaces”.

I first stumbled across the notion of fourth spaces through an Eventbrite report which outlines how 84% of Gen Y and Zers are forming friendships through interest-based events – and they're doing it IRL with 73% of 18-to-35-year-olds planning to attend live events in the next six months. What’s also worth noting is that 45% cite belonging and identity as key motivators for joining communities, while personal growth is also an incentive. 

My interest officially piqued, I did some digging and discovered a 2020 article written by anthropologist Giulia Balestra, in which she states that our first, second and third places (the home, the office and the in-betweens) were already becoming smaller and smaller:

"Little has been written about a fourth space. But with the blurring of lines between the different spaces and the endless possible combinations, it seems reasonable to imagine that there’s more than we can experiment with how we see, design, organise and move between places."

Fourth Spaces are inherently “phygital” – they blend both physical and digital worlds to create new, immersive and interconnected experiences. And they usually leverage technological innovations to do so. 

A more recent explanation discovered on Substack states that the Fourth Space isn’t defined by algorithms or trends, though. 

"The Fourth Space is born from the desire to live fully, to find meaning in the in-between moments, to create spaces where vulnerability feels safe and belonging isn’t earned but embraced. It’s a quiet network of people who see the world not as a collection of individuals but as a tapestry of relationships."

Some Examples

Patricia Mou's The Commons, based in San Francisco, exemplifies the Fourth Space concept. It describes itself as “a place of pause between stimulus and response”, where individuals can explore meaning, question paradigms and grow within a supportive community fabric.

Similarly, Protein's very own SEED CLUB positions itself as “a place where people and ideas grow" and it was in fact through SEED CLUB that I discovered The Commons, thanks to an insightful comment from Mike Evans:

“I definitely prefer this concept of a space that you actively program to fulfil certain connection requirements as more convincing than the third space as a place of meaningful exchange narrative … I feel like a defining factor of the fourth space is the conscious architecting of a certain kind of experience or connection – an engineered third space with a shared objective.”

Interestingly, Mou recently took a step back from her venture after noticing the space’s trajectory into an exclusive social/members club, wanting to rethink how to build community spaces Americans actually need in the wake of the loneliness crisis. “Spaces like The Commons should enhance life vs. silo it – in all its shadow and light, multi-dimensionality and pluralism,” she posted on X. 

Post-Coworking 

The next generation of office and coworking spaces, according to Gehl, won't be bound to one location anymore. In response to a difficulty in finding infrastructure deftly designed for the contemporary professional, it suggests the need for social infrastructure and networks of physical and digitally social spaces that can build relationships and foster thriving communities.

Political scientist Robert Putnam, known for his work on social capital, believes that social media can play a productive role in rebuilding civic engagement in Western societies. He says: 

“We could develop social media in a way that they would actually contribute to our lives — our personal lives, and our collective lives.” He also highlights that it would probably be “a little less profitable.” 

But social media is complex and complicated: run by billionaire bros known for their profit-over-people (and planet) mentality. These tech conglomerates capitalised on human connection and community – and yet it can feel as though we’ve never been more alone. 

Human Connection

A recent survey by Vox Media suggests that the future of the internet may lie in smaller, community-curated experiences:

In this emerging AI era, the very ideas of community and human connection are poised for redefinition. Brands and platforms will weaponise the terms in a bid to capture the attention of their ideal audiences.

New_ Public is a case in point: the nonprofit R&D lab constitutes researchers, engineers, designers and community leaders working together to create public spaces in the virtual world where people can thrive and connect; reimagining social media so that it can help people connect and thrive.

Toby Shorin, a Brooklyn-based researcher and writer and part of Other Internet, has discovered that social innovators are experimenting with new social forms of care: organisations and social technologies (with a focus on health and healing) are attempting to create new social paradigms – and differentiate themselves from legacy institutions of finance and care. He characterises these institutional prototypes as combinations of these four categories of social form: 

• Centres are physical community spaces with a healing focus. 
• Campuses network together spaces in the existing built environment under a new identity. 
• Parlours are private spaces of digital discourse. 
• Practices connect people across space and time through sustained embodied activity.

Decentralised Social Architecture

With Fourth Spaces often being hybrid, decentralised and community-driven environments, it makes them a natural fit for DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and Web3 technologies. 

For example, Metafactory is a DAO-driven fashion and culture collective that creates social and cultural spaces that blend online communities, crypto-driven collaboration and real-world gatherings. Another is Friends With Benefits, a kind of social network made up of creatives and builders who believe in the promise of a better internet.

Then there’s Kolektivo Labs, which utilises a DAO framework for local regenerative economies, including care-based initiatives. It focuses on community resilience and social services as part of local DAO-governed ecosystems – and these care-focused DAO projects cater to local needs (food, health, care) through community tokens. 

Technological innovations may have given us social media and everything that comes with it, good and bad, but it’s also given us a way out. We just need to utilise it. Collectively. 

Long gone are the consecutive days I would spend in coffee shops alone, mainlining caffeine and ignoring anyone who looked in my direction. Now, they are replaced by an intentional few days a month spent in the company of other like-minded individuals that live and work on their own terms – while also trying to orchestrate a better future for the human race.

Long live the Fourth Space. 

If you're interested in reading more, we recommend you download our DIRTY WORDS #4 COMMUNITY report as it covers many of these topics and more.