The neighborhood mosque, a charpai under a shady tree, the dhaba around the corner: in Pakistan, many of these meeting points are what you would call a “third place.”

A term coined by American sociologist, Ray Oldenburg, a “third place” (often also referred to as third space) is used to describe a place outside of your home and work, where you connect with friends, neighbors and strangers. While the term was coined during the 1980’s to refer to places like cafes, beer gardens and pubs in the West, third places have existed in various forms in the global South for decades. But heavy gender segregation, class stratification, and the shifting contours of urban centers (e.g. sprawl, apartment complexes, gated communities) raise questions of what counts as a third place when so many of them feel inaccessible to large parts of the population, as well as their survival.

According to Oldenburg, a third place should be a physical space with little to no economic barriers to entry where you can easily come in and go to chat with friends, neighbors and strangers. Writer Allie Conti mentions spontaneity, purposelessness, and “a willingness among all parties involved to go wherever the conversation leads them,” as some of the ideal components. Haroon Khalid, author and researcher, whose work focuses on religious spaces in rural Punjab, tells me that while the open spaces at mosques and shrines do bring community members together, it’s really dhabas in small localities that function as the ideal third place. The owner of the dhaba, always a local, serves as the glue. Tables intermix freely. Strangers, such as travelers making stops, are welcome to join. People will share their roti and karahi while you wait for your order, and the conversation can range from local happenings to general rants about corruption.

Women however, are rarely present. Given the dhabas’s central role in social life, they became a symbol of women’s exclusion in public spaces through Girls at Dhabas, a small feminist collective that emerged in 2015, that explicitly brought and captured young women at dhabas to covertly highlight their absence from the public sphere. Women’s participation and visibility however, can also vary based on city, class and the place itself, argues architect and researcher Marvi Mazhar. In Karachi for instance, she points out that there is no ‘rok tok’. “It’s a city of the working class…If you ask for a space, they will give it to you,” Mazhar tells me. She emphasizes that men and women in Karachi do merge together in many casual spaces, such as in the Irani chai khanas where women sit in the same hall. But divisions frequently appear if you move to more formal or religious events, and they are certainly apparent at roadside dhabas as well.

Dhabas may also be losing relevance in major urban centers. Fellow Dunya columnist and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) professor, Umair Javed, points to how dhabas in bigger cities have come under threat because of anti-encroachments drives by urban authorities such as in Islamabad; as well as competition from the proliferation of Quetta tea houses, which are (roughly) equally affordable, and have open seating. While Quetta tea houses and more gentrified dhabas – higher end tea shops – catering to the middle class youth may be well-poised to take on the role of a third place, they lack the neighborhood and community aspect that the Irani tea houses in Karachi, Pak Tea House in Lahore or Silver Star Café in Peshawar, and social events within old mohallas, offered because of the changing nature of urban life itself.

In this excellent piece, Marvi Mazhar, Manahil Faisal and Mustapha Vasi point to how historically, the city’s mohallas were “vibrant spaces of interaction” that frequently brought men and women together, unlike the emerging system of grids, gated communities and apartment complexes that create a disconnect among urban populations. In Karachi, specifically, neighborhoods were organized by language, and would frequently organize gatherings like baithaks in Lyari or mushairas in North Nazimabad. The outbreak of violence during the 1990’s however, changed Karachi residents’ idea of a shared space as people became more afraid to convene in public places.

In Peshawar, widespread insecurity and violence brought on first by the Afghan insurgency and later, sectarian groups led to a wave of internal migration that completely changed the city, impacting how city residents interacted with each other. In conversation with me, Peshawar-based journalist Manzoor Ali shared how violence in the city and its surrounding regions led to many historical residents leaving Peshawar, and changing how people socialized. Shops began to close earlier in the evening, and residents became afraid to even attend Friday prayers, especially during the height of the violence between 2009 and 2014. Over time, the city’s rich culture of third places, specifically the qehwa khana and tea stalls, where locals would always gather in the evening to chat until late, or its historical cafes, such as Café Shiraz or Golden Star in Saddar that would attract the city’s political and intellectual elite, began to die out.

Violence however, is not the only factor in stifling the culture of third places. Even in cities like Lahore and Rawalpindi, which did not suffer from the type of insecurity that Peshawar and Karachi did, the relentless sprawl and proliferation of suburban communities have begun to create a vacuum. Infrastructure projects in Pakistan’s urban centers (such as in Lahore) routinely prioritize cars over pedestrians even though significantly more trips are taken by foot than private cars. This ‘car-centric mindset’ coupled with city governments’ persistent lack of investment in mixed use spaces that can effectively function as a third place denies residents, especially youth, from avenues where they can express themselves and engage with people from different backgrounds.

While day laborers in cities can still turn to dhabas – which remain highly relevant in smaller towns and rural areas – gender and class considerations intertwined with the absence of sufficient sports grounds, libraries or mixed use spaces result in large parts of the population still lacking access to a third place. A few pioneers however, have stepped up to bridge the gap. In Lahore, for instance, a group of eight friends set up Kitab Ghar, a visibly queer-friendly community library that hosts cultural events like book launches and film screenings. In Karachi, the late Sabeen Mahmud, a human rights activist, set up The Second Floor (T2F) , a community space that was designed in the coffeehouse tradition.

While it lacks a social bent, the wildly popular Third Culture Coffee in Lahore, founded by three friends, Ahmed Suleiman Ghaznavi, Babar Monnoo and Suleman Khanzada, also comes close to serving as an effective third place, especially during the coffee chain’s early days. Its first branch, an iconic 20-foot shipping container in the parking lot of a luxury mall in Gulberg, began to function as a third place for many Lahori residents, ranging from business owners, students, gym goers to writers and artists. “We would see them every day, and we got to know them,” Ghaznavi tells me. He and his co-founders also took care to hire staff that had ‘personality’, and instilled a culture where they remembered everybody’s names, orders, and made the space feel welcoming and safe.

“When the (Third Culture Coffee) container was demolished by the Lahore Development Authority, it was an emotional moment not just for us but also for the customer base,” Ghaznavi remembers. The container was a site of proposals, wedding shoots, and for many in the LGBT community, it was one of the few safe, public spaces to hang out in the city. Ghaznavi and his co-founders were both touched and surprised at their customers’ affection and attachment to the space. “We just wanted to make a nice coffee shop that we wanted to hang out at,” Ghaznavi laughs.

Third Culture Coffee has inspired a new culture of cafes in Lahore, which are trying to emulate its sense of community. However, it doesn’t always stick. Even with the proliferation of Quetta tea houses or gentrified dhabas across Pakistan’s major cities that enjoy high foot traffic, these new establishments have not filled in the gap of a neighborhood dhaba or chai or qehwa khana. “These are also commercial enterprises,” Manzoor Ali reminds me, “Community is not at the heart.”

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s urban centers continue to grow, and infrastructure projects and city government investments continue to de-emphasize community cohesion – whether in the form of lack of pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, resident safety, gender equity and affordability. At this rate, Pakistan may never end up fully actualizing a key pillar of social life.