Going Places - The lack of Third Places in Cork

I’ve always been a city boy at heart. There’s just something about the ability to get everything you need within a relatively short walk or cycle that’s intensely appealing to me. You’re usually very close to major transport interchanges, and between that, and the fact that most city centres have ample parks and public spaces, meeting up with friends, even outside of a pub, bar, or café, is usually pretty easy.

And then, there’s Ireland.

For all of this country’s inescapable natural beauty, urban space here in Ireland is almost comically impoverished. Whilst this might be partially understandable, given the fact that the country has, for most of its history, been both impoverished, agricultural, and occupied by a hostile power, the sheer level of apathy directed towards anything even remotely urban is still staggering. All of this is in spite of the fact that a functioning urban realm, with plenty of third places within easy reach of locals and visitors alike, is vital to the proper functioning of any society.

Homes, such as this development in Ballincollig, are generally considered First Places.

Wait, Third Place? Is that some sort of higher dimension inhabited by murderous eldritch entities that are hell-bent on killing everything? No, that’s Thirdspace, and I’ll leave that particular higher-dimensional can of worms to the crew of Babylon 5 to sort out. The term Third Place was coined by US sociologist and author Ray Oldenburg. In his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg defines First Places as people’s homes, whilst Second Places are defined as “mission-driven” places, generally workplaces, although I suppose supermarkets and other retail stores could fit into that category as well. A Third Place meanwhile is defined as an informal space separated from the other two and centred around building community and interactions. Oldenburg uses cafés, pubs, bars and similar places as examples of Third Places. 

Workplaces such as this office block at Horgan's Quay in Cork, are considered Second Places.

Now, I’ll be honest, I have more than a few issues with Oldenburg’s definition of Third Places. For starters, many of the places he describes are in and of themselves exclusive to a certain degree, and he goes to great lengths to prescribe a gender divide in his examples that I find both antiquated and deeply discriminatory. Granted, Oldenburg wrote his book in the 1980s based on observations and papers from the 1970s and earlier, so this is, if not justifiable, at least somewhat understandable, but it is certainly not the type of definition of Third Place that we need in this age of ever more extreme polarisation and income inequality. In my eyes, Third Places nowadays need to be inclusive and above all non-commercial in order to ensure that they fulfil their stated purpose of building communities.

Either way though, despite the prevalence of pubs in this country, Ireland’s urban areas are almost exclusively focused on First and Second Places. Take Ballincollig as an example, the Cork suburb where I live. According to the latest available census data, the town has a population of 22,800. In almost every other setting, this would be a fairly decent-sized town. However, the vast majority of residences in the town are suburban detached or semi-detached homes. The only true “urban” core along Main Street didn’t develop until the early to mid 2000s, following the conversion of the former Murphy Barracks into a business park and the construction of Ballincollig Shopping Centre. For most of my time in Ballincollig, the public space in this embryonic urban core has been rather austere, with very little in the way of public seating or other amenities. Over the past few years, a number of cafes have thankfully opened up along Main Street, but non-commercial spaces continue to be far and few between, with the town library hidden away in what looks like a failed 1980s shopping centre. It’s a great asset, don’t get me wrong, but its location and state doesn’t really lend itself to being a community hub in any real sense of the word. Beyond that, there’s not much in the way of public green spaces available, the only space of this kind within the urban core being Barrack Square, the former parade ground of Murphy Barracks. Granted, there’s also Ballincollig Regional Park, which is a major asset to the town and an excellent amenity in its own right. However, owing to its origins as a gunpowder works, it is removed from the town by quite a bit and its access is heavily geared towards motorists, with car parks and access roads being prioritised over sidewalks or pedestrian access.

This type of urban space is typical in Ireland. Few seats, transitory in nature, mostly ringed by commercial spaces and, if you're lucky, a café.

The situation in Ballincollig is representative of Cork city as a whole. Urban third spaces, especially of the non-commercial variety, are in desperately short supply and much of the available space in the city is either dedicated to, or has been usurped by, motor traffic. To be fair, Bishop Lucey Park, one of the only real parks in the city centre, is getting a much-needed upgrade and redesign, however on the other hand, trees in the city centre are being chopped down left right and centre, benches are being removed under the presence of reducing anti-social activity, and public spaces such as the city library, are being treated as an afterthought. Meanwhile, rampant on-street parking and a dearth of parking enforcement all but choke out any chance for a proper street life to develop.

Non-commercial third places, such as this library in Cork City...

...or this one in Ballincollig, are a rare thing in Ireland's urban fabric,

What’s worse, there doesn’t seem to be any real impetus to change this situation. Cork city centre, and indeed the centres of many of the surrounding satellite and commuter towns, have been hollowed out by decades of suburban development. And just like it happened in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, this explosion of suburbia has moved the political and economic centre of power of of the city and into these suburbs. In one of his more salient points, Ray Oldenburg outlines how this flight to the suburbs with their car-centric infrastructure and discouragement of walking led to a steady decline in feelings of community, civic responsibility and engagement, and increasing feelings of isolation and abandonment. Cut off from social interaction and any nearby gathering places, people became increasingly insular and resentful. We can see the ultimate culmination of this trend in the White House right now. Thankfully, the situation in Ireland is nowhere near as extreme. Apart from a political system that’s generally pretty good at filtering out the basket cases, Irish society isn’t nearly as pathologically individualistic as its counterpart in the USA.

The redesign of Marina Park from a road...

...to an urban park is a sign that things are slowly changing in Cork.

Elizabeth Fort is another example of a non-commercial Third Place, although it is unfortunately exposed to the elements, which isn't exactly the best choice in Ireland.

Unfortunately, even this watered-down version has had significant detrimental effects on urban space. Parks, plazas and public seating are generally seen as focal points of anti-social activity and as such, investment in these is sparse at best. The same goes for youth facilities, clubs, hangouts and other similar spaces. Youth in general are pretty much demonised and blamed for literally every bit of antisocial activity that goes on. Unless, of course, they’re part of the local GAA club, in which case they literally can’t do anything wrong. The result is a public realm that is very much diminished and demonised. The recent boom in outdoor cafés as a consequence of the pandemic has countered this to a certain degree, I’m writing the last part of this blog post in the outdoor seating area of a café, but even that is facing significant opposition.

I don’t want to end this post on a sour note though. Because, in fairness, there seems to be some sort of a paradigm shift slowly beginning within the city council. Over the last few months, there has been an uptake in maintenance of public spaces throughout the city. There has also been a trickle on pedestrian-centred urban space redevelopments within and adjacent to the city centre that have come online in recent times. The redevelopment of MacCurtain Street and the remodelling of Marina Park spring to mind first and foremost, although the former is plagued by rampant illegal parking. It is promising, but much more is needed.