Sociologists use the phrase "third places" to describe the public spaces—cafes, barbershops, corner libraries—that are neither home nor work. Ray Oldenburg, who popularized the term, argued that such places anchor community life by offering neutral ground where people mingle without the obligations of family or the hierarchies of the office. A regular at a diner is not a guest and not an employee; he is simply a familiar face, welcome but unaccountable. Recent research suggests these places are thinning out. As shopping migrates online and suburbs spread, the incidental encounters that third places once guaranteed have grown rare. Some planners respond by engineering conviviality—installing benches, widening sidewalks, subsidizing coffee shops. Yet Oldenburg's admirers caution that a third place cannot be manufactured on demand. Its warmth comes from repetition, from the slow accretion of small greetings over months and years. A bench is only lumber until the same strangers begin, without planning to, to expect one another there.