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Human interaction would be chaotic if we were unable to exert control over the places where we live and work, and all societies have a system for recognizing human “territories” and enforcing rules that demand respect for the territorial rights of others. But what types of spaces, exactly, do we need to recognize and protect?
Social psychologist Irwin Altman proposed that spaces differ according to how important they are to the lives of their owners, with some territories being much more “central” than others. Centrality refers to the amount of security and control that an individual has in a place, and Altman believes that most human territories fall into one of three categories: primary, secondary, and public territories.
Primary Territories
Places in which the owners feel they have complete control over access and use are called primary territories. These include homes, offices, cars, or bedrooms that are essential private spaces. Primary territories are owned and used exclusively by one individual, family, or group and they are clearly recognized by other people as being private spaces. The law recognizes the sanctity of primary territories and it is usually considered justifiable to use force in defending them.
Primary territories such as homes are often complex combinations of “mini-territories” controlled by different members of the family. Privacy battles between teenagers and their parents over access to the teen’s bedroom reflect this dynamic.
Studies of how families think about the spaces in their homes typically reveal that individual family members are usually in agreement over who “owns” specific areas in the home. Some areas, such as living rooms, hallways, and bathrooms are perceived as public areas not controlled by any one family member, unless the bathroom is attached en suite to a specific bedroom.
Bedrooms, offices, and studies, on the other hand, are considered to be spaces that belong to one person (or more if the bedroom is shared); usually, the “owners” of these spaces feel very strongly that these places represent them and that nobody should disturb them without permission when they are in there. Interestingly, kitchens are public areas used by all but are often thought of as belonging to the mother, since in most families she is the one who usually takes charge of what goes on there.
In short, territorial divisions in the home closely parallel the day-to-day activity patterns of the family members.
Secondary Territories
Secondary territories are less psychologically central to the lives of their users, less exclusive, and less under the occupants’ control than primary territories. Secondary territories have a blend of public availability and private control, often serving as a bridge between primary territories and public spaces. Examples of secondary territories might include a neighborhood bar, the street directly in front of a person’s house, a neighborhood under the control of a street gang, or seating areas in a school cafeteria or lounge.
Research consistently shows that people develop a sense of ownership over places where they spend a lot of time, and the intensity of our feelings increases with the time we spend there. I do not assign seats in my classrooms, but I notice that students tend to sit in the same seats every day. Moreover, when they take different courses in the same room during different semesters, there is a strong tendency to try to reclaim “their” seat when the new semester begins. Students become visibly flustered if they show up for class and an interloper is sitting in the place that they regularly occupy.
Because they are usually more difficult for outsiders to identify, the potential for misunderstanding and conflict over secondary territories is great, and disagreements are especially likely to occur when these areas are not under frequent surveillance, when they are difficult to personalize, and when they do not appear to the untrained eye to be owned by anyone. Such spaces lack what architect and city planner Oscar Newman referred to as defensible space.
For example, for several years my family and I lived in an apartment in a college dormitory where we served as the dormitory directors. This building was our home and, in the summer, we were the only people living there. Just inside the front door of the building between two staircases was a space large enough to store two bicycles. We quickly adopted this space as a secondary territory since it was just outside the door to our apartment, and we regularly kept our bicycles there.
When the students returned to campus in the fall, however, they would put their own bikes there if our bikes had been absent for even a brief period of time. Since we had enjoyed exclusive daily use of this space for so long, we had developed a sense of ownership over the space and felt violated and angry whenever it was usurped. Knowing, however, that from the students’ point of view, this was a public area that we had no more right to than anyone else, we usually kept our discontent to ourselves.
Public Territories
Places that are available to anyone on a temporary basis are public territories. Common examples of public territories include tennis courts, space on public beaches, or seats in libraries, parks, and shopping malls. Individuals use these territories for brief periods of time and then move on. They are not central to their users’ lives, and they are not associated with the same feelings of ownership and control that are typical of primary and secondary territories.
If a public territory is used regularly enough by an individual, it may eventually achieve the status of a secondary territory, as in the example of students’ seats in classrooms that I used earlier.
Territorial Control, Marking, and Defense
Many studies indicate that Altman’s distinction among three types of territories is a valid one, as people do in fact exhibit greater control in primary than in secondary or public territories.
Furthermore, primary territories are often marked in ways that reflect the values and personal characteristics of their owners, whereas secondary and public territories are more often marked in a simple attempt to temporarily reserve the space. Territorial markers create an effective warning system that allows people to avoid confrontations with others over public spaces. Territorial markers in public places are almost always respected by others, but there is little evidence that we will go to much effort to defend and preserve our control over a public territory if our territorial claim is challenged.
