In 2011, Richard Kyte, an ethics professor at Viterbo University, noticed that two of his colleagues were growing increasingly isolated. So he suggested they meet every Wednesday at 6:30 am for breakfast at a café five blocks from their university in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Fifteen years later, the meetups have continued and expanded, now happening at a tavern after the café closed. Some of the most reluctant participants are now the most engaged. Even as the group has changed, the opportunity for connection has remained.

“A couple colleagues that started with me years ago, our friendship has really deepened,” said Kyte, noting that he’s also become good friends with those who joined later. “When you’re talking about adding a close friend, that’s a huge change in the quality of your life.”

Places like Kyte’s local tavern have long offered more than food and drink. Known as “third places,” these informal gathering spaces outside home and work—from cafés and barber shops to local parks and libraries—can serve as hubs for social interaction, community ties, and civic engagement. But across the United States, many of these places are disappearing, transforming, or giving way to large corporate chains, some of which may prioritize efficiency and turnover over giving people a space to linger. That shift comes as Americans are feeling increasingly lonely, divided, and distrustful.

Kyte, author of Finding Your Third Place, said third places are not only declining overall but also changing. “They’re changing their character. The old places that were common third places are dying pretty rapidly,” he said. “Where do I find a third place? That’s a question I get a lot.”

First coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, third places are a crucial form of social infrastructure. Research shows that they can foster belonging and social cohesion, as they offer opportunities for casual, low-stakes interactions. Regular engagement in these spaces has also been linked to lower loneliness and stress and better physical, mental, social, and cognitive health.

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“Covid brought a greater awareness to third places, to how vital they are for everyday health and well-being,” said Jessica Finlay, anassistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. ”They can be a social glue that connects us, and it’s really important for not just individual health but collective health.”

Yet fewer people are visiting these spaces, particularly since the pandemic. A national survey found that 54 percent of Americans now regularly spend time in such places, down from 67 percent in 2019.

Rising costs, remote work, busy schedules, and growing e-commerce are some of the reasons these places have become harder to sustain and fit into daily life. People are also socializing and communicating less. In 2025, 30 percent of Americans did so on an average day, down from 38 percent a decade earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Part of that may be because there are more ways to connect and be entertained without leaving home. Social media, gaming communities, group chats, and other digital spaces have moved more social interaction online. Finlay said these digital third places can bring both promise and peril.

“Even though you might be able to find folks who share the same passions or interests, there historically is value in productively encountering difference. When we’re in third places in person, we might be right next to someone who doesn’t think like we do or navigate the world in the same way,” she said. “We can lose a lot of that online.”

As third places become scarcer, their loss isn’t felt equally. A 2025 study found that the overall decline in third place availability may disproportionately affect majority-Black, lower-educated, and rural communities. Some of these groups already report higher rates of loneliness or less social support.

“We wanted to dig a little bit deeper into where are these closures concentrated? And we did find that underserved communities typically saw a greater concentration of closures,” said Finlay, one of the study’s authors.

But the pattern isn’t uniform, Finlay added, as some kinds of third places are holding steady or increasing. For instance, the majority-Black communities in the study had more access to civic and social organizations, beauty and barber shops, and restaurants. Libraries, meanwhile, were more concentrated in less-educated and rural areas. Some of these communities may also be more adept at finding other places to gather. “The story is complicated.”

The Trust for Public Land has also found that neighborhoods where most residents are people of color have access to an average of 44 percent less park acreage than predominantly white neighborhoods. Similar park space inequities exist in low-income neighborhoods.

Without accessible third places, experts warn, people may become more isolated and social networks can shrink. Their loss may also deepen political division and mistrust. In a 2025 Pew survey, just 44 percent of Americans said they trusted all or most of the people in their neighborhood.

“When you have a decline in the amount of time that people are actually spending getting to know others in their community, you have a decline in trust, because…most trust is built through person-to-person relationships,” said Kyte. “And so we’re going to continue to see less trust, and that leads to more polarization.”

Kyte added that third places can also help build deeper relationships over time, as he’s seen with his weekly tavern meetings. “Third places are the main places where we go, where we expand that friendship network. As people go to them less, they become increasingly lonely and there are fewer options available that are both accessible and affordable.”

But Setha Low, an anthropology professor at City University of New York, cautioned against drawing a straight line between fewer third places and rising loneliness. “Everybody’s looking for it to be one thing,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be one thing.”

Still, creating more opportunities to gather starts with supporting places where it can happen. That means helping existing third places stay open while making it easier to create new ones, from investing more in public spaces and lowering barriers for small businesses to rethinking policies and regulations that make such spaces harder to build.

“The main thing that needs to be done is to revise zoning codes in towns and cities to allow for small business in residential areas, usually called mixed-use zoning,” Kyte said. “There is a growing movement among urban planners to do this, but it’s a long, slow process. My own city of La Crosse is in the middle of this process right now.” Other cities such as Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Seattle have also been rethinking such zoning rules.

Through its Local Conversations initiative, Strong Towns is supporting more than 290 locally led groups across the country to take small steps to build community and improve their neighborhoods. The changes can be simple, said John T. Reuter, the organization’s executive director, such as adding benches at bus stops and dog parks, making intersections and crosswalks safer, or turning front yards into gathering spaces.

“People were reaching out to their neighbors, finding ways to connect, and starting to figure out how to heal their places,” Reuter said. “The very core problem that we have is our built environment is what’s driven us to this space of disconnection. And the solution is to start with reconnecting public space.”

But creating more third places isn’t enough; they also need to encourage connection. Comfortable seating, for example, can give people a reason to linger, while programming can draw people into the space. Finlay said that can require getting meaningful input from the communities the spaces are meant to serve.

“It is both quantity and quality,” she said. “Folks have mentioned wanting to just feel welcome in places, so little things like having ‘all are welcome’ signs or doing programming like game nights and trivia.”

Ultimately though, people have to show up.

“Each of us individually can have third places reappear for us, whether that’s a church or a coffee shop or a bowling alley or a game store, right? Whatever it might be, I would just encourage people to go out into the world,” said Reuter. “All of these things are happening today, and you just have to go out and find them and join them. You might not be able to end the loneliness epidemic for everyone, but you can end it for yourself.”