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John and Margaret Myer offer an explanation of what attracts us to certain places and what makes us comfortable once we arrive. John, an architect and the former head of architecture at MIT and Margaret, a licensed social worker who taught at Harvard, and Tufts Medical Schools, discuss the connections between the fields of architecture and psychology as they present their new book People & Places: Connections Between the Inner and Outer Landscape. The Myers' groundbreaking treatise leaves room for discussion and encourages us to think about how designers and users can work together to create spaces that will nurture and support us in the future. Their book was written for those engaged in making places - urban planners, housewives, architects, politicians, builders, students, or simply those people who want to understand their deep connection to a place or places.

The Myers relate the level of comfort that we experience in different places, to our early childhood needs as described by Erik H. Erikson. Through the study of what makes a person, drawing on Erikson's work, the book explores our early and lifelong needs and then relates these needs to places. It shows how places and people are tied together by describing the design process of three different types of places. Finally, it looks to the present state of place making, its precedents from the past, and the rapid cultural changes that leave us without precedents for the postindustrial electronic age. The Myers suggest that, as we look to the future, we need to value the past so we can make harmonious and continuous communities that are places for people in the future.