Use of Space.

I'm very interested how different cultures can even use space differently.

"When I was in Antwerp..." (don't I sound like a jackass) one of the most interesting things I saw was in the immigrant neighborhood that had all this great Belgian architecture, and right outside an African fabric store this African woman was sitting in the shade with her back against the wall and one leg tucked up under her, just like women I had seen sitting in the Market, "When I was in West Africa..."

I was thinking of this the other day because there's this Egyptian coffee shop here in Milwaukee that makes Arabic coffee and Egyptian/Arabic-type pastries, and they have some tables out front, and the owner sits out there a lot, and the owner of the shawarma place a few places up comes down for coffee or sends one of his workers for some, and it reminded me of the comraderie (sp.?) between adjacent business owners that I saw, "When I was in Morocco..." ... Even though there is a ton of outside seating in the hipster area very near the Egyptian coffee shop, no-one was using that space like the Arabs were doing.