Private knowledge can convert public space into semiprivate territory

Evidence

As the knowledge one has about any particular public space increases in detail, completeness, and certainty, a peculiar alteration begins to take place in the character of the space itself. As the individual increases his knowledge, he transforms what were initially strangers into personally-known others. As he does this, he increases his ability to use the setting for his own private purposes. The more knowledge he possesses, the less the setting is an alien place full of strangers, the more it begins to seem like home. And when his knowledge approaches maximum, in detail, completeness, and certainty, the setting ceases to be, for him, for all practical purposes, an urban public locale at all. It becomes, in effect, semiprivate space; it becomes a home territory. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 709

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the chapter’s core definition of ‘home territory’ — a public locale transmuted into semiprivate space by accumulated private knowledge.
• XREF: The graded knowledge-to-home continuum is the principle behind the fictional flâneur’s slide from observer to invested local, echoing the detachment/unreliability arc I’m tracing. — connects to: Expanding the personal protected sphere lets tradition recolonize formerly democratic space — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 172; Private law governs relations among private citizens and organizations. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 152; Public green space doubles as political space threatened by privatization. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1136 (+1 more)