‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

Why don’t we report on resource transfers as well as resource stocks?
Perhaps this is for the same reasons that other environmental management methods ignore ethical 
issues. It would be politically awkward for government-funded SoE reports to show transfers of 
wealth or control over the means of survival. Few want to draw attention to issues that might ‘rock 
the boat’.
13
Planning has automatically allocated public resources to private development at a rate 

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that does not cause excessive voter or civil discontent (ie planning could be said to function like 
a toilet stopcock). Also, to appear ‘objective’, decision aids, models and analyses must be abstract 
and detached from political issues. Thus analyses and decisions are unlikely to take into account 
effects on power relationships over the long term. The design of ‘objective’ analyses reflects the past 
unwillingness of researchers, on the whole, to accept responsibility for the social and environmental 
consequences of their work. To be seen as objective, environmental scientists, in practice, also need 
to appear apolitical.
14
Many espouse the view that by providing ‘objective’ methods, decision-makers 
will act on information in objective ways. By subscribing to the myth that they have a more pristine 
and detached perspective, researchers do not have to account for the political outcomes of these 
tools.
15
This creates a vicious circle. This may seem overly cynical, but one can only imagine the 
reaction a scientist or academic would receive for developing a reporting methodology that mapped 
wealth transfers through discretionary planning decisions over time.
Surely not all scientists and consultants support the status quo?
Not at all. However, scientific integrity is compromised by a growing privatization of information.
Scientific methods, models, tools and data are increasingly applied by private consultants under 
commercial-in-confidence provisions. Consultants, even more than scientists, cannot afford to offend 
clients and need to appear ‘credible’. But credibility is often code for supporting the status quo.
Therefore consultants usually present ostensibly value-neutral, apolitical analyses that recommend 
little or no basic change. So while reporting creates jobs for environmental scientists, it also creates 
vested interests in ‘passive’ kinds of methods, measurement and reporting frameworks that do not 
challenge business-as-usual [Chapter 7]. After all, if old tools addressed environmental problems, 
we would have solved them by now. In short:
•
Scientists are not ‘scientific’ unless they are apolitical 
• 
Consultants must say what their clients want to hear 
• 
Politicians need to cover up or down play problems 
• 
Planners feel they need to accommodate the market
• 
Designers are segregated from science and politics
There is a gap here. There is no mainstream field of enquiry or decision sphere concerned with the 
costs of inaction and/or growing differentials of wealth and power [Chapter 13]. Hence reporting 
has not yet done much to make decision-makers accountable.