What Makes a Good Third Place?

I found this article about stations as third places, and I'd like to offer my comment on it:

The article in question has a bit of confusion: first it starts talking about London Marlyebone (a major terminal) and comparing and contrasting it with like depots in the U.S. (Chicago Ogilvie, D.C. Union...) but then the reference to Kalamazoo--in no way a major urban terminal--throws one off.

The problem with this, I think, is that the level of activity needed to make a good third place in smaller cities and towns, like Kalamazoo, is much less than what is needed in major cities. So the discussion of why Seattle's King Street or Indianapolis Union underwhelms fits well in a context dominated by stations like Marlyebone, Grand Central, Southern Cross, Gare du Nord, etc., but not Kalamazoo.

A second problem is that transportation options alone do not make a third place. Greyhound stations usually have lots of transportation options, for example, but are equally as universally dank, dark, dreary, and lots of other words that begin with D.

Let me offer up an example of a smaller station that is a great third place. Lansdale, PA, is a borough in the Philadelphia suburbs, a smallish town to the north of the city. It is near the edge of the city's extensive-by-American-standards commuter rail network. And it is a good third place. Why?

It has a small café/coffeeshop inside (a good one too). This encourages commuters to stop and get a cuppa, and breakfast and even lunch. It has free Wi-Fi, which should not go unnoticed when we note that Starbucks and Barnes & Noble are frequently cited as good third places. The trains there run half-hourly (at least) from before dawn to midnight, and there are two buses that stop there too. It is along the borough's Main Street, guaranteeing a wealth of other third places nearby (such as the library). And it is in an architecturally excellent and reasonably well-maintained structure--in other words, a building projecting warmth and hominess--something else we need to keep in mind and often don't. It's not perfect, of course--the waiting area and café within close up before dinner hour--but as far as stations as third places go, it's an excellent example of what can be achieved even in a borough of 10,000.

And on the flipside, architectural quality really can make a difference. Market East is one of Philadelphia's busiest stations, and sits right off the concourse of an urban mall, but fails to be a good third place in no small part because of how dreary the waiting area feels. By contrast, the platform area is extremely open and airy, and hence many people favor waiting there instead, which sucks the energy out of the main waiting room(s). 

Does anybody know of any other smaller stations like Lansdale's--stations that function as much as a place to go to as they do a way to get from there to here? I am sure it's not alone: even in the Philadelphia area, I can think of a couple of other stations that come close...

Edit: A prompt reply:

Thanks Stephen. Kalamazoo was meant to depict that you do not have to be a
big city station to be a successful third place. Your description of
Lansdale sounds like another fine example. For mid-sized city status, four
AMTRAK passenger trains a day is a lot here in the U.S., though it would be
even better to have commuter rail to Chicago from there like SE Wisconsin
and NW Indiana do. I think the differing time zones between MI and IL makes
that difficult.

I have been in Market East and agree with your assessment - that is
partially why I did not include it. In addition, not all small city
stations in the UK are great third places - many are just way points, but
the station in Inverness, Scotland is a successful exception. Perhaps it
helps being a tourist town. 

...

Urban Emergence

I've been at my childhood home in the far suburbs these past few weekends helping my mom move, and what has caught my eye is the first real New Economy project up there. Some zombie sprawl projects--permitted before the crash--have been ongoing due to the locally-strong economy (thanks Merck), but this is the first project that has been entirely conceived and realized after 2008. It's called Cannon Square, and it's rowhomes.

Here is where it is, at the corner of 2nd and Cannon in inner Lansdale, on the site of old industry with parking lot, and this is what it looks like:

Now there are many ways, of course, to critique the design, especially when you use beautiful, truly urban neighborhoods such as Northern Liberties or Southwest Center City--neighborhoods where the effect of the housing crash was passive rather than pervasive--and of course there's little that can quell my distaste for the builder, W.B. Homes (who seem to put more effort into their subdivisions' signs than the subdivisions themselves), but there are two major things to note here:

1. New Economy projects are urban. They consist of primarily attached housing, an urban format, in urban contexts (utilization of existing infrastructure in preference to its installment de novo), commonly multilevel, with small blocks. They are designed and realized in smaller footprints, and with smaller budgets. This style was pioneered with Southwest Center City builders (such as Metro Impact), who, whatever else they claim or one says about their designs, have succeeded in bringing economies of standardization to the inherently nonstandard nature of infill, primarily by standardizing rowhome design, and is clearly catching on with the bigger builders.
2. Big builders are adapting to the New Economy. They have to. THP's spectacular collapse concomitant with the collapse of the real estate bubble in the Philadelphia area was very much due to their overextension in suburban formats to the exclusion of all others (a trait shared by other major builders). Now other major builders--such as Toll Brothers and W.B. Homes--are finishing up previously-permitted projects and showing a trend of favoring investment in urban-type projects. Toll Brothers, for example, bought large into Philadelphia with Naval Square, and are following up with new projects across the street, at 20th and Bainbridge, and in Society Hill's NewMarket hole. This is also emblematic of a larger shift to more urban environments--environments that these companies are only now learning to build in.

We will have to see whether this is an emergent trend--or just an aberration.