Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 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
- Index
4 - The Landscape of Work: Visible or Virtual?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 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
- Index
Summary
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
For 4 months in 2009, I lived and worked in Rome (ho abitato and lavorato, as I learned to say). I lived in the renovated convent of the Sant' Agnese in Agone church (see Figure 4.1), and the circular window in the study of my apartment overlooked Bernini's famous Fountain of the Four Rivers (Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi) in the Piazza Navona. Those moviegoers who have seen the 2009 film Angels and Demons will remember that the fountain is the scene of the rescue of the last Vatican hostage. What made this experience even more special was that I worked in this building; the classroom where I taught was one floor below my apartment. If I forgot a notebook or the adaptor for my computer, it was only a flight of stairs away. If I needed a coffee break, it was down the stairs and around the corner to Café Tor Millina, in my neighborhood. Between my morning and afternoon classes, I could simply walk upstairs and fix lunch in my own apartment. My situation reminded me very much of the benefits of living in a city that Jane Jacobs described in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But we are not in Kansas anymore, which is my way of saying that very few Americans live and work in one place, as I did in Rome.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- What Americans Build and WhyPsychological Perspectives, pp. 171 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010