Several studies have shown that local residents increasingly withdraw from local public places either into the privacy of their homes or into remote recreation areas. The villages thus mutate more and more into dormitory towns. Often this tendency is seen as a consequence of spatial alienation. To understand this process we investigated two Swiss rural communities using methods of qualitative social science research. We found that increasing individualism was a stimulating condition for avoiding local public places. The main cause for this proved to be the rigidity of the social structures which inhibit the residents from expressing and regulating their individual identity in public places. In order to counteract this process, to satisfy residents' needs and avoid compensatory effects such as increased mobility, more places of informal interaction are needed in rural communities.