The skill urbanites develop for public navigation is deployed defensively to avoid others

Evidence

We are protected against both of these typical dangers of the city by antipathy, which is the preparatory phase of concrete antagonism and which engenders the distances and aversions without which we could not lead the urban life at all. The extent and combination of antipathy, the rhythm of its appearance and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied, all these, along with the more literally unifying elements, produce the metropolitan form of life in its irresolvable totality; and what at first glance appears in it as dissociation, actually is one of its elementary forms of association. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 285 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Urban reserve conceals a latent antipathy that functions as a form of socialization — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 754; Lone urbanites create private space through body management rather than by changing place; Urbanites suppress obvious reconnaissance to shorten their exposure to settled observers (+5 more)

Related

• Urban reserve conceals a latent antipathy that functions as a form of socialization (similarity 0.84)
• Antipathy is a protective element essential to urban living. (similarity 0.84)
• Lone urbanites create private space through body management rather than by changing place (similarity 0.82)
• Urbanites symbolically transform public space into private space to reduce stranger contact (similarity 0.81)
• Ethnic neighborhoods can shelter inhabitants from ever learning to navigate strangers (similarity 0.80)
• Urban avoidance and urban adventuring are contrasting behavioral poles of city life (similarity 0.80)
• Urban avoidance demands sophisticated social skills, an irony of city life (similarity 0.78)
• City dwellers deploy avoidance devices to carve privacy from public space (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modern urbanites defuse situational ignorance by avoiding unprepared places #expands (0.70)
• Ethnic neighborhoods can shelter inhabitants from ever learning to navigate strangers #complicates (0.60)
• Avoiding fearfully-labeled city areas costs urbanites movement and home feeling #complicates (0.55)
• Antipathy is a protective element essential to urban living. #corroborates (0.55) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 285
• Residents’ private claiming of public spaces both reinforces and subverts urban spatial order #contradicts (0.50)