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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

Not to diminish the guys work, it's a good read, I just find it amusing he's from Toronto, a place that contains arguably the largest "third place" in the whole world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(Toronto)

I was actually walking through it on Monday and noticed they've renovated all the stuff down by Bay and Front, there are LOADS of working areas and eating areas (with and without vendors, HUGE areas of eating area without vendors in fact) - I'm always super impressed by the path, it's a cool thing as someone not native to Toronto.

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I'm a Toronto native and the PATH is very cool, but I don't know how great of a third place it is.

It does have public seating and tables, but they are spread out and often not very large. Also almost all of the shops are closed down on weekends (it is basically a ghost town) including the washrooms. Together this makes it seem much more like a large cafeteria and shops for people going to or from work. But I don't know if that qualifies it as the best third place.

That being said Toronto is decent at third places, we have decent park density and a good handful of public spaces like city hall and a good distribution of quality public libraries. So maybe I am just coming from a place of privilege.

They just completed a bunch of renovation in the last few months, if you've not been in the blocks around Bay and King recently, go check it out, it looks great! If they do that to the whole path, it will really open it up a lot.

I was there. (I am admittedly not a regular but did recently go on a "PATH walk".) I don't think that renovation is the main problem. The PATH is very nice and comfortable. I see the main issue is it being closed weekends (I don't think most shops are not allowed to open, probably not the food ones at least as the bathrooms are locked.) I understand that this would be a tough problem to bootstrap. Because obviously no one is there because no shops are open, but no shops are open because no one is there. But it does seem surprising to me that Starbucks or some other coffee shop next to a huge array of fairly comfortable tables couldn't make a profit on weekends, even if it took a while for the word of this nice location to get out.

It's a good idea, even if they zoned/mandate some of it as such (coffee shop in work area open on weekends), technically the city is in charge of the path. I know a few councilors through work, guess it's worth mentioning.

I don't want to diminish how interesting the path is, but in my experience, it's still too far out of the way and too purpose-driven to have the organic spontaneity of a good third space.

Indeed, on the first point, I live in a condo connected to the path, so obviously extremely useful for me. Not sure if you've been inside recently, but as I mentioned the renovations they've done in the core core core (2-3 blocks of CIBC tower) has really opened it up, before it was just a tunnel to me, it's slowly turning into a "place" - but I do overall agree today it's not quite there for most of the core (and will never be great for those outside it, it's way too hard to navigate if you don't use it daily)

Doesn't seem like much of a third place, more of a run of the mill shopping mall.

I think many consider the shopping mall the quintessential 3rd place: https://www.vox.com/videos/2018/4/11/17220528/american-shopp...

Hmm I see the American definition of this is a bit different. I've always considered the term as places you can meet with people but don't have to pay to exist in. Parks, playgrounds, libraries, benches around a river, town squares, university campuses, seating around a statue, that kind of thing.

From my EU perspective there's really no shortage of absurdly large shopping malls, bars, restaurants, pubs, stores and the like. They've just become so expensive to hang out in that it feels like you're being robbed at gunpoint which takes nearly all enjoyment out of it.

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