PERSON - ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS: PROFESSIONAL INTENTIONS AND PUBLIC RESULTS, AND WHAT MIGHT BE DONE TO REDUCE THE DIFFERENCES

Abstract

If, as has often been claimed, Architecture is "the mother of the arts", then by the same token Psychology may well be "the father of the (behavioral) sciences", and it is by now (pleasantly or painfully) obvious to (most) all that the innocent dalliance of these two over the past decade has taken a very serious turn; and indeed has passed well beyond the point of any possibility for a therapeutic abortion. "Environmental psychology" (perhaps the most common name of the several applied to this variously received offspring) is now an undeniable fact of life. The professional schools of environmental planning and design - as the socially institutionalized purveyors of expertise in the practice of the ("social") art and the ("man is the measure") science of intervening in the physical environment for experiential purposes, and especially as one of the means for the advancement of this art and science--have no choice but to acknowledge the issue of this academic and professional miscegenation by legitimizing it in their curricula and programs.