With Man In Mind: An Interdisciplinary Prospectus for Environmental Design [Paperback]

Although a responsible and welcome critical literature in the social sciences has in recent years been measuring the human costs of urban renewal and environmental degradation, telling the designer what to avoid does not necessarily enlighten him about what to do. The designers too have been transforming their attitudes, moving away from the rhetorical toward the socially aware and the scientific. The two groups are readier to meet now than ever before, and if they do so in the ways put forth in this book - with man in mind - then we will be better able to bring our environmental technologies into human service. With Man In Mind is not, however a handbook or manual of techniques, ready-made; it is instead an argument for changing the terms of our discourse about man and environment so that we can do interdisciplinary research on questions that matter. With the questioning of the ideas in this book, collaboration may finally begin.

Constance Perin convincingly pleas for the institutionalization of behavioral research in her important book, With Man in Mind. City planner Perin separates the things people do into units called behavior circuits. By tracking people's behavior through their everyday activities at the scale of the room, the house, the block, the neighborhood, the city, Miss Perin believes we will begin to learn what resources - physical and human - are needed to support people.

This is an engaging and well-written book about an important subject: how concepts from behavioral sciences can bring a central concern for human behavior and development to environmental design.... The book is easily read and, therefore, accessible to practitioners and students who wish to inform themselves of ideas being developed in research on behavior and the environment. The author seems qualified for the task not only by an expertise as a behaviorist or designer, but by being more knowledgeabl3‡