Why a directory, not another app.

A sociologist named Ray Oldenburg wrote a book in 1989 called The Great Good Place. The argument was simple. People need three places to be whole. The first is home. The second is work. The third is somewhere else. A café. A barber's. A sauna. A climbing gym. A Sunday run club. Where you become a regular without trying, where the staff remembers your name, where you go to feel like the city is partly yours.

London, 2026, has eight point nine million people and an official loneliness minister. Pubs and restaurants moved upmarket. The third place got harder to find.

What this is.

Places We Connect is a directory of London's third places. Bouldering gyms, ice baths, saunas, run clubs, sound baths, pottery studios. Four Spaces visited so far this week. The rest are being walked through, door by door. Five activity directories live on Day 1, with eighteen more opening over the next two weeks.

What it is not.

It is not an app for making friends. It does not match you, message you, or run an algorithm on your weekends. We do not host a DM inbox. We do not run a friendship algorithm. We do not call you part of a tribe. We map the venues. You show up. The place does the rest.

Why we charge Spaces, not readers.

Spaces have revenue. Readers and volunteers do not. The directory is paid for by the places that can afford it. £49 a month at the founder rate (first 50 listings, locked for life). £69 thereafter. Groups, practitioners, and communities list free.

Why parkrun is the model.

parkrun is a single-vertical directory that hits 508,000 monthly UK visits. It is not a media brand. It is not a marketplace. It is a list of places, kept up to date by people who care about the places. Places We Connect is the cross-vertical version, geo-locked to London, verified before listing.

What you can do today.

Open the directory. Browse five activities. If you run a Space, list yours. If you want the five places worth showing up to next week, join the weekly map.

— Solomon