Socioplaces: at the boundary between public and private

The purpose of this investigation was to explore people´s conceptualization of  public and private places and how these places are assessed regarding their suitability for engaging in social interaction. A total of 50 people, men and women distributed into five intervals of age were interviewed using an open-ended procedure based on the classification of a set of 34 cards including places’ generic names. After the interview, participants answered a questionaire regarding their preferences for social interaction in these places. The results obtained by a Multidimensional Scale Analysis showed that the construct of “place function” explains the general structure observed in the assessment of places, and the age group, explains the differences for socializing in them. The study demonstrates that socialization has a spatial component that serves as a milieu for facilitating transactions between individuals. Socioplace is introduced as a new concept for understanding the social experiences of people in the urban environment.