personal space in an impersonal city

I live in Victoria. Victoria is a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants. Victoria is a city in many respects - multistory buildings, several traffic lights, problems with homeless and a drug culture - but it nevertheless feels like a small town. There is almost always (disregarding Canada Day celebrations) lots of room for everyone. You don't have to avoid people on a constant basis while walking down the street, there are rarely line ups at grocery stores, traffic issues never delay you more than 10 minutes, and you pretty much guarantee a table or 2 buffer at any of your favourite coffee shops....

I'm visiting Vancouver (my actual home town). Vancouver is a city of several million people. Vancouver has all the city-like characteristics that Victoria has plus a sprawling suburbia and a constant feeling of claustrophobia. I'm sitting a perfectly remote (as remote as one can get in the metropolis) coffee shop and I've had my table or 2 buffer invaded not once, but twice! AT THE SAME TIME! My once spacious and comfortable corner has become an overcrowded orgy of legs, books, and coffee cups... I'm left with a mere fraction of what I thought I had fairly claimed despite the fact that I thought I'd left ample room for another party or 2 to join me in my cozy corner...

I guess, like many Canadians, I suffer from inmyspaceaphobia. I much prefer the ability to swing my arms randomly and freely in any direction to the availability of immediate conversation partners. I can always say to someone across the room,"Hey! How about that local sports team?!?!" But I can't always afford the legal council to help get me out of an inexplicable assault charge... I guess it's a good thing I'm going back to the Island tonight... :)