Feeling at home in public space requires one’s primary group present

Evidence

The various methods of locational transformation are limited in their usefulness. They all require the immediate presence of a smaller or larger group of personally-known others. Or, to phrase the situation more “sociologically,” they all require that the individual either stay where his primary group is or take his primary group with him. It is, in fact, this cooperative presence of others that allows the transformation in the character of the location itself to occur. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 828