Sociospatial Disparities in “Third Place” Availability in the United States

Abstract

Tertiary to home and work, “third places” serve as opportunity structures that transmit information and facilitate social capital and upward mobility. However, third places may be inequitably distributed, thereby exacerbating disparities in social capital and mobility. The authors use tract-level data from the National Neighborhood Data Archive to examine the distribution of third places across the United States. There were significant disparities in the availability of third places. Higher poverty rates were associated with fewer third places. Tracts with the smallest shares of Black and Hispanic populations had comparatively more third places. However, this racial disadvantage was not linear, suggesting potential buffering effects in places with the largest shares of Black and Hispanic populations. There was also a rural disadvantage, except in the most isolated rural tracts. This study demonstrates the value of conceptualizing and measuring third places to understand sociospatial disparities in the availability of these understudied opportunity structures.

The Built Environment and Social and Emotional Support among Rural Older Adults: The Case for Social Infrastructure and Attention to Ethnoracial Differences☆

“…Census tracts with both the smallest and largest relative shares of Black and Hispanic populations had more social infrastructure than tracts with moderate relative shares of Black and Hispanic populations. The authors hypothesized that high shares of social infrastructure in communities with the greatest proportion of Black and Hispanic populations were due to the buffering effects of grassroots organizing and entrepreneurship within these populations (Rhubart et al 2022). Moreover, evidence reveals that some rural areas are vulnerable to lower availability of social infrastructure (Rhubart et al 2022), including aging-related services (Pendergrast and Rhubart 2022).…”

“…We selected social infrastructure types by drawing on the domains proposed by Rhubart et al (2022): (a) free and publicly available places (e.g., religious organizations, civic organizations, and libraries); (b) low‐cost commercial places (e.g., coffee shops, bars, and fast‐food restaurants); (c) personal services (e.g., salons, barbershops, weight‐loss counseling, spas, and tattoo parlors); (d) creative, athletic and entertainment places (e.g., spectator sports, fitness and recreation, bowling alleys, museums, and performance arts); and (e) social services (e.g., organizations that provide social assistance, services for the elderly and persons with disabilities, other individual and family services, and community food services). Given that previous work has shown similar levels of social infrastructure availability across these domains (Rhubart et al 2022), and that many forms of social infrastructure are substitutable, we combined all domains into one social infrastructure measure. We aggregated census tract counts to the county level and used population‐based density (per 1,000 residents) to calculate availability of social infrastructure.…”

“…Recently, important ethnoracial disparities have been reported in social infrastructure availability and SaES. Rhubart et al (2022) found a curvilinear relationship between social infrastructure and ethnoracial group. Census tracts with both the smallest and largest relative shares of Black and Hispanic populations had more social infrastructure than tracts with moderate relative shares of Black and Hispanic populations.…”

“…The authors hypothesized that high shares of social infrastructure in communities with the greatest proportion of Black and Hispanic populations were due to the buffering effects of grassroots organizing and entrepreneurship within these populations (Rhubart et al 2022). Moreover, evidence reveals that some rural areas are vulnerable to lower availability of social infrastructure (Rhubart et al 2022), including aging‐related services (Pendergrast and Rhubart 2022). Therefore, equitable availability to social infrastructure for facilitating social interactions across all settings and groups cannot be assumed when examining SaES (Carver et al 2018; Versey 2021).…”

“…Ethnoracial minorities in the United States have faced policies and practices steeped in complex histories that resulted in racialized inequality at both the individual and community levels (Murase et al 2019). These inequities span the dimensions of social infrastructure availability (Rhubart et al 2022), as well as health and well‐being (Bailey, Feldman, and Bassett 2021; Evans‐Campbell 2008; Mulvaney‐Day, Alegría, and Sribney 2007).…”