As I remember my life as a kid in a quite small town in the south of Sweden, the spacial aspects mattered a lot. For example, when you visited a friend it was important if he (in my case, not girls) lived in a villa or in an apartment (like me). The villa people – this was really how I saw it – were usually richer, had more stuff and parents who were still married. One or two cars were usually a part of the villa life. Living in apartments were totaly different: of course less space, but also quite often a single parent and more limited resources. Townhouses (radhus in Swedish) were something in between those two – in my hometown, those were being built during the 80's. I remember those three different types places as very important in my childhood. More luxurious apartments didn´t exist, as I recall.
My hometown is, like many other Swedish towns, sorrounded by big forest areas. In those areas you could hide – things or your self. You could build your own hut or cubbyhole in or connected to a tree. Personally, I didn´t like the forest very much. It was either very boring (finding birds or plants were, to me, just boring parts of biology classes in school) or threatening. Dangerous people, such as the moped gang (see another thread), might show up in the forest. The forest was also an isolated area where you could find strange stuff: abandoned cars, old porn magazines, used car tires, and vodka bottles.