IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities
Abstract
Across global contexts, health and social policy makers have raised alarms about increasing social isolation and loneliness. The role of public places in mitigating such concerns has long occupied sociologists’ and urban planners’ attention, with particular emphasis on the significance of ‘third’ places. Studying these physical and virtual places beyond home and work is particularly relevant in contexts where urbanization intersects with growing precariousness in everyday life. This paper reports findings from an ongoing critical ethnographic study of third places in the lives of retired and precarious workers in two North American cities. The study involves multi-method qualitative data generation with 23 retired workers and 15 precarious workers in Canada and the United States. Emerging study findings highlight a range of design elements that facilitate or inhibit residents’ access to and engagement with third places in their communities. Study findings illustrate differences in the types and characteristics of third places accessed by participants within and across study contexts, noting relevant influences of the built environment (e.g., transportation) and social environment (e.g., dynamics of inclusion and exclusion). The presentation of findings foregrounds the ways in which users of third places (re)make said places through the everyday activities, or occupations, that constitute their engagement with the places. Integrating perspectives on place-making, Lefebvre’s spatial triad, social infrastructure and architecture, and critical occupational science, this paper aims to outline salient anchors for community-engaged (re)design of third places in contemporary urban contexts.
Rebecca Aldrich is a Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy at the Mrs. T. H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California. Her research explores how multifaceted human and non-human elements influence the shape of everyday life in situations of social marginalization. In particular, her research aims to illuminate how assumptions underlying sociopolitical and institutional structures and strategies do or do not align with the realities of everyday life.
Debbie Laliberte Rudman is a Distinguished University Professor at the School of Occupational Therapy, Western University in London, Canada. She employs critical qualitative approaches and social theories to examine how the everyday participation, or occupation, of collectives, particularly groups who experience social and economic marginalization, are situated with socio-cultural, spatial, political, economic and historical conditions. Her scholarship aims to raise awareness of, disrupt, and reconfigure conditions that perpetuate social, spatial, and health inequities.
Suzanne Huot, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is currently serving as the interim co-Director of the UBC Centre for Migration Studies. Her work focuses primarily on Francophone immigration to Canada as well as immigrants’ experiences of preparing for, seeking, and engaging in employment within the Canadian labour market. Situated within occupational science, she studies the spatiality of the occupations shaping people’s everyday lives.
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Wednesday 17th June, 2026