Summary

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.