Book excerpt: Because housing is a multidisciplinary, fragmented field of research, investigators are faced with the difficult task of pulling together information scattered in a wide variety of narrowly focused sources. In this volume, comprehensive, current knowledge encompassing the field as a whole is offered for the first time. Twenty-eight specialists in the major subdisciplines provide up-to-date information on the social, economic, environmental, policy, and architectural dimensions of housing and the built environment, together with extensive bibliographies for each topic. Creating a comprehensive framework for study and research in the field, this handbook will be helpful to planners, architects, developers, and citizens groups in addition to academics in promoting better understanding of the broader issues of housing.