Spaces for Children: The Built Environment and Child Development

As a developmental psychologist with a strong interest in children's re­ sponse to the physical environment, I take particular pleasure in writing a foreword to the present volume. It provides impressive evidence of the con­ cern that workers in environmental psychology and environmental design are displaying for the child as a user of the designed environment and indi­ cates a recognition of the need to apply theory and findings from develop­ mental and environmental psychology to the design of environments for children. This seems to me to mark a shift in focus and concern from the earlier days of the interaction between environmental designers and psy­ chologists that occurred some two decades ago and provided the impetus for the establishment of environmental psychology as a subdiscipline. Whether because children-though they are consumers of designed environments­ are not the architect's clients or because it seemed easier to work with adults who could be asked to make ratings of environmental spaces and comment on them at length, a focus on the child in interaction with en­ vironments was comparatively slow in developing in the field of environ­ ment and behavior. As the chapters of the present volume indicate, that situation is no longer true today, and this is a change that all concerned with the well-being and optimal functioning of children will welcome.