Design in Familiar Places: What Makes Home Environments Look Good

Residents look at their neighborhood differently than visitors and designers do. The features that they see as most important can differ significantly, so that spaces that are viewed as successful by designers may be disliked by residents. Designers who hope to create successful residential environments can benefit from a more complete understanding of the residents' perspective and their priorities. This residents-eye-view is especially critical in troubled neighborhoods.

Brower compares the responses to the same environment by residents, tourists, and designers. Using observations, interviews, innovative survey methods, and an examination of the literature, he details accepted norms that govern who uses and controls neighborhood spaces, children's play networks, neighboring patterns, territorial behavior, and the personalization of space. Brower then describes the application of these ideas and findings in a series of design interventions in an inner city neighborhood in Baltimore. These interventions are thoroughly documented and evaluated, and the lessons learned from both successes and failures are used to inform design ouidelines for the study area. The interventions also help to define the role of outside professionals; in particular, the importance of involving residents in defining and resolving their own problems, and the need to accept space management and social organization as proper concerns of design. The book is written in clear, simple language, and uses drawings and photographs to illustrate the ideas presented.

. . . Brower's book raises many significant issues about territorial behavior, spatial appropriation, personalization, and caring for the environment. In particular, his work on why so many of the inner-block parks in Harlem Park were not used or cared for as expected is a model of honest evaluation of his own work which we would all do well to emulate. In fact, any planner or designer working in an urban neighborhood would do well to heed the approaches and recommendations encompassed in this book.Landscape Journal

The insights gained by a practicing designer researching and learning from both the academic world and from practice are rare and valuable.Architectural Psychology Newsletter (U.K.)

This is a book that should be welcomed by many. The potential audience for this book must include architects, landscape architects, and city planners, but also park and recreation professionals, housing developers, and environmental psychologists....This is a book that deserves to be read and remembered by anyone seeking to improve the quality of life in residential environments.The Journal of Architectural and Planning Research

Design in Familiar Places is a refreshing departure from the current trend of books in architecture, which rely on a kind of 'proof by assertion'....A very important aspect of this text is the way it celebrates perception as a creative act. The idea that perception is a personal and social construction suggests that the residents are not the passive consumers that design professionals sometimes assume....Brower's analysis helps the reader further identify the nature of the dialogue among a variety of perceptions that is needed to make and sustain a good home.Environment and Behavior

Part I.

Three Faces of Design

Believing is Seeing

Residents and Outsiders

The Subject of Design

Design Conventions

A Home in the Wilderness

Part II.

Introduction

Description of the Study Area

Casebook

As Residents See It

Design Guidelines