Erik,

I have to admit that space is the one thing that I miss most, that really
drives me almost to the edge sometimes, living in Japan.

But that is probably because I am from the Midwest US!

But the crime rate here is lower than that in the US, despite extremely
crowded living conditions.

I think that economics has much more to do with violence than space, per se.
In primitive communitites, people often lived and slept together in very
small spaces.  Of course I am equating primitive peoples with peaceful
peoples...which they were, until someone encroached into their space,
probably a consideration you were thinking.  But I think the consideration
was more from how the land could be used to hunt and plant, etc, rather than
from the need for space per se.

Judith