Improving Community Well-Being through Third Spaces

In our initial research of third spaces and their use, we found a gap between the benefits of third spaces and how planners design those spaces. The existing literature on third spaces is fragmented across a myriad of terms, checksheets, and indexes, each with some overlap but different foci. This discord impedes a planner’s ability to design a third space that effectively accounts for the various factors academics have put forth in their research. To remedy this, we conducted an investigation into the existing understanding of third spaces and aggregated the results into one product, distilling them into a comprehensive list of criteria that is usable for planners. We then applied those criteria to Virginia Tech’s 2047 Beyond Boundaries plan to assess how well the university’s goals align with the existing third space literature. This serves as an example of our criteria in action, demonstrating their applicability. Finally, we created a list of qualitative questions based on our criteria that planners can use when designing a space. This will provide a concrete tool to fill the gap between third space benefits and how planners design third spaces, providing greater clarity and support as they design the spaces of tomorrow.