What Americans Build and Why

1. The landscape of housing: suburbia, new urbanism, and McMansions; 2. The landscape of health care: high tech and humanistic; 3. The landscape of schools: big schools, small schools; 4. The landscape of work: visible or virtual?; 5. The landscape of retail: big box and main street; Closing comments.

Ann Sloan Devlin is the May Buckley Sadowski '19 Professor of Psychology and College Marshal at Connecticut College. She has taught at Connecticut College since 1973 and has received the John S. King Faculty Teaching Award (2006) and the Student Government Association Excellence in Teaching Award (1991). In the spring of 2009, she taught at the Pantheon Institute in Rome in a Study Away Teach Away (SATA) program sponsored by Connecticut College. While in Rome, she gave an invited seminar at La Sapienza (University of Rome). She is on the editorial review board of the journal Environment and Behavior and has been a Board Member and Secretary of the Environmental Design Research Association. She is a Fellow of Division 34, Population and Environmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association. She has two previous books: Mind and Maze: Spatial Cognition and Environmental Behavior (2001) and Research Methods: Planning, Conducting, and Presenting Research (2006). Her articles appear in journals such as Environment and Behavior, the Journal of Environmental Psychology, and the EDRA (Environmental Design Research Association) Proceedings.

"When do homes, schools, health care facilities, workplaces, and shopping centers become too big, too void of community, to do the essential psychological work of sustaining human well-being? In this book, Ann Sloan Devlin's distinctive voice questions how everyday environments came about and how the places where we spend most of our time have evolved to be inauthentic and alienating. Her work sheds light on the invisible 'program' underlying what is built in the U.S. Although the program is often well intentioned, it ultimately has proved to thwart some of our basic human needs for health and well-being. According to Devlin, our quest for a better community will require us to start recognizing the power of these forces shaping the world we construct. She shows how research on human needs and well-being can support the future evolution of the daily built environment into more supportive places that sustain both individual and community needs. Devlin's work is well timed to take on the challenges of creating a more sustainable and humane future." - Barbara Brown, University of Utah "Ann Sloan Devlin's What Americans Build and Why: Psychological Perspectives covers the forces that shape our built landscape and our connections to one another. It deals with those land uses which occupy the most space and where we spend most of our time: housing, schools, work places, shopping environments (malls and main streets), and health care. Moving easily between personal experience, history, policy, research, and case studies, the book involves and offers the reader complete and expert evidence, analysis, and recommendations. It is an essential book for present and future designers, planners, clients, city managers, and others who care about the links between the built environment and our quality of life." - Jack L. Nasar, The Ohio State University "Ann Sloan Devlin decodes the physical form of contemporary American icons, including high tech hospitals, suburbs and McMansions,