If you build environments where people bump into the same people with high frequency and low stakes, they will socialize.
This is why so many friendships and relationships come out of work and school.
For me, it happened by accident, first in the techno music scene (clubs and parties are third places), and then again in the poker scene in Las Vegas. 100% of my local friends in Vegas are math/strategy nerds.
People haven't stopped going outside. Certainly if you give some other reason to get together (to play a sport, to listen to bands play music, whatever) on a frequent basis, then yes, socialization is bound to occur as part of that, but that is not the same as having a place centred around socialization; a place where you can turn up when you feel like it and find other people there also waiting to socialize.
The trick of the third place is that it is a destination. But perhaps you are recognizing why the third place is difficult to support: There are a million other places to socialize. A destination isn't necessary.
> In a car-dominated world there are no such things as chance encounters
Why not? Hell, just last night I was driving my car and noticed the aurora, so I stopped to look at it, and then someone else came along and stopped too. We had a good 20 minute chat before parting ways. Without cars, I would have probably been at home and probably wouldn't have talked to anyone.
You need loose connections to make a third place functional whatsoever, and those loose connections cannot emerge when everyone is going from steel box to drywall box to steel box.
Your example is a great argument but not for the point you’re trying to make. People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment. It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
People prefer to socialize with those they know, but you have to start somewhere. That's where the third place is an effective tool and the neighbourhood pub is, indeed, especially great for that because, if all else fails, the bartender will talk to you. And the bartender will introduce you to other patrons and get the conversation started. That's their job!
However, it is clear that the neighbourhood pub is also a dying breed. I expect in large part because parents are now hyper focused on the activities of their kids and using that time with other parents as their own social life. Additionally, young adults are now going to college, which brings its own social venues. That leaves a small gap between college and having kids, and maybe a small gap as one enters into retirement (although I would argue that this group is still fairly well served in the third place arena), along with a small segment of the population who remain childless, which doesn't leave all that many people to even support a third place realistically. These days there are an endless number of places to socialize, creating much fragmentation. A third place struggles when you find such fragmentation. It turns out that third places are more appealing when one third place has 20 people in it rather than when 20 third places each have one person inside.
> People talk when they are given the chance to talk in a low stakes environment.
Yes, you captured my point well. Cars don't change this. More often than not they will get you to that low stakes environment.
> It took an extremely rare natural event to get you to stop your car and by golly, look, people talked!
The natural event may have been somewhat rare (although not all that rare around here), but stopping the car wasn't particularly rare. Unless I'm on a determined mission where nobody is getting in my way, ventures out in the car usually lead to meeting other people. And when I'm that determined, I'm not stopping while out walking either, so it's not the car that is significant.