Social Policies, the Designed Environment, and Human Development.

To talk about human development requires some point of view which will allow the visualization of the various parts and processes within the context of an organized unit. Social policies will be formulated differently, depending on the assumptions one holds about people. The concept of an open system is used in this presentation to illustrate that point of view. Briefly illustrated are some implications for social policy when one views the person as a complex open system existing through transactions with multiple contexts, and when one adopts positive development as the highest priority human objective, with remediation as the backup system. (RC)