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

So would this new configuration change the roles of the other spheres?
Somewhat. The reconfiguration would involve ‘tweaking’ so that these spheres also support 
sustainability. This means that the functions of the existing decision arenas would need to be re-
clarified in terms of their role in achieving sustainability and conflict prevention:
•
The market system
can reconcile individual demands, preferences and choices with
production and distribution systems. It can be good at providing for the efficient delivery of
material goods and services to meet consumer demand by facilitating efficient ‘exchanges’ (at
least compared to, say, state capitalism). While it claims to ‘balance’ supply and demand,
powerful individuals, corporations and oligopolies have acquired sufficient power to control
both [Box 49]. Producers seem able to create unnecessary and insatiable ‘needs’ through the
media and other marketing channels. Further, in spite of the efforts of ecological economists,
the market still treats environmental goods and services – the very basis of the entire
economy – as if they were free, or else just commodities to be bought and sold. Seen as a
conflict-resolution system, though, the market could help to avoid or resolve conflicts among
individuals through informal bargaining and exchange processes. It cannot deal with
underlying ethical issues, however.
• 
The political system
, seen as a conflict-resolution system, was designed to restrict state 
interference in the rights of individuals. It was also designed to restrict individual
interference in the rights of other individuals, groups or society as a whole. Of course, it is
important to ensure representative democracy does not evolve into ‘selective representation’,
as some interests are more politically influential than others (through limits on campaign
funding etc). Further, political mechanisms are not an appropriate means to resolve basic
sustainability issues, because these are ethical in nature, not distributive. Once again, even 
if
the political process resulted in more equal decisions and outcomes, democracy in dividing
up public goods and consuming them is not sustainable. There has, of course, been a
lot of work in the area of ecological democracy, but this has not entered mainstream political

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Positive Development
debates. Moreover, sometimes terms like ecological democracy are confused with
conventional ‘environmental management’.
27
Like the market, the political arena has not yet
dealt successfully with sustainability issues.
•