--- title: McDonalds Is America’s New Community Center description: How McDonalds holds communities together, how we can nudge our brains toward healther decisions and more. canonical: https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-14T16:00:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:59:53.708Z article:section: Ideas og:title: McDonalds Is America's New Community Center og:description: These are today's best ideas og:url: https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: McDonalds Is America's New Community Center twitter:description: These are today's best ideas twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # McDonalds Is America's New Community Center by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Jun 14, 2016 4:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Jun 14, 2016 4:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**Forget social networks. McDonalds is the glue holding many communities together.**](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/08/mcdonalds-community-centers-us-physical-social-networks) By Chris Arnade in the Guardian **2\.** [**Could we ‘nudge’ our brains to make healthier choices?**](http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/06/08/healthier-choices/) By Yasmin Anwar in UC Berkeley News **3\.** [**Robotics and facial recognition will transform dairy farming. Really.**](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/forget-the-plow-robots-and-facial-recognition-for-cows-will-be-essential-tools-on-the-digital-farm/) By Teena Maddox in Tech Republic **4\.** [**Banning plastic grocery bags is great for the environment, right? Not so fast.**](http://grist.org/climate-energy/are-plastic-bag-bans-good-for-the-climate/) By Ben Adler in Grist **5\.** [**Some companies are dumping email — and getting more done.**](https://hbr.org/2016/06/some-companies-are-banning-email-and-getting-more-done) By David Burkus in the Harvard Business Review  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/"},"headline":"McDonalds Is America's New Community Center","datePublished":"2016-06-14T16:00:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:59:53.708Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/","keywords":["Innovation","Email","health","Community","farms"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/innovation/","name":"Innovation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4368082/mcdonalds-community-center/","name":"McDonalds Is America's New Community Center"}}]}] ```