Automotibles are not car culture. If anything car culture turns a garage into a third place, by your definition, and brings other people out of their houses and out of the workplace, to meet. Car culture is more an adaptation people have made due to the advent of the automotible and the problems you attribute to “car culture”. Everything has expanded and is cut up by streets and shit because automotibles are useful… as a side effect has made it harder to have a third place, as you have pointed out, and so people who engage in car culture actually overcome the challenge by integrating automotibles into their culture, they persevere.

I would actually make the same argument for internet culture. The internet isn’t internet culture, and if anything internet culture has allowed people to express themselves through the internet, embracing it and integrating it into their lives rather than just living beside it. For people who consider themselves part of internet culture, the internet is their third place where they play.

With that said, it’s still an interesting idea. I do think we pay a high price for the luxuries that we have today and it’s not well understood. Having infrastructure designed around automotibles, for example, fucking sucks.