About parks and their status as third places: in Paris (and I'd say a lot of European cities) they are used as an extension of home/friend and family activities

About parks and their status as third places: in Paris (and I'd say a lot of European cities) they are used as an extension of home/friend and family activities. Birthday parties, drinks with friends, eating together. So a public spaces for private group activities. You can also spot people working there, or doing physical training, classes of small children drawing… really diverses activities. I also noticed that museum or libraries are more often included as third places than parks are (even when parks in paris got free wifi at the same time as libraries). Indeed, gyms and swimming pools will not be seen as third spaces, so parks might be conceptually somewhere in between "body hygiene spaces" (as inherited from the early 20th vision) and intellectual third spaces (idem, inherited from Vienna intellectual life early 20th). As an example Les Buttes Chaumont in Paris is clearly modeled as a very early theme park, with fake lake, fake caves… placing it at birth in the entertainment space category, generally not considered third places. Edit: the notion of "promenade" (just walking together) is central in the creation of early public parks in Paris. I think play and picnic are more recent additions, but they combine in the concepts that drive most of public park design.