Are All Habitual Areas Created Equal?
If you’ve sat through our Tactical Analysis Advanced Course or read the book Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Course Can Save Your Life, you know the definition: a habitual area is a place where anyone can come or go at any time, without any restrictions.
So that’s it? I teach the class, but I can think of a thousand different questions regarding behavior that I might see in habitual areas.
While the definition works for the introductory class on geographics, you see that in practice, it isn’t always so cut and dry. Should we consider opening up different classifications for habitual areas?
What if there were two different types of habitual areas: the restricted habitual area and the unrestricted habitual area? If you were to visit a neighborhood park, there would be no question that you were in an unrestricted habitual area (unless of course there is some sort of gang presence there pushing people away.) Anyone at all could come and relax, barbeque, and let their kids run around on the playground without any expectation of them. But what about at a local restaurant, café, or coffee shop? If you were to go to Pizza Port, would you classify that as a habitual area? What about Starbucks? I would definitely say they are, since anyone can come or go from there, but in that case, there is the expectation that they are going to buy something from the business. They welcome you to sit at their tables to meet with people whenever you’d like, but aren’t those seats still reserved for customers? However, I don’t think that requirement makes Starbucks or Pizza Port an Anchor Point.
Would a place like this require a different name to describe the behavior that you would expect to see there? I’d say its possible. In the park there are no expectations. But at Starbucks there are. Is this where we need to break habitual areas down to say that the restaurant (or whatever place you are in fitting this description) should be called a restricted habitual area? That anyone can come or go, as they like, as long as they buy something?
We use geographics to let us anticipate a baseline before we even show up to a location, but do requirements on the people and customers change that baseline? Or maybe I am just adding in extra words and making this more complicated. Let me know what you think.