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

Efficiency in industry
: The call for a ‘new industrial revolution’ through radical resource
efficiency will hopefully inspire a positive self-fulfilling prophesy. But conventional industry
will not easily give up its home advantage and compete on level ground with new
environmental businesses.
28
Unless existing planning controls, commercialization criteria
and government subsidies change dramatically, innovation in the construction industry will
further entrench, not transform, our development system. 
• 
Innovation
: While there are many tools that can support creativity and innovation, they were
not designed for sustainability.
29
Creative-thinking stimulators help us think outside the box.
However, the main focus of innovation tools and processes has been on developing new
processes, products or services to compete with, or leapfrog, old ones. On the whole, most
current innovations do not reduce total production, consumption and resource flows.
30
We
need better criteria for investment [Chapter 14].
Why hasn’t environmental planning been able to modernize itself over time?
There are many reasons for the incoherence of environmental planning in contemporary society. One 
of these is that planners who are concerned with conservation, or even sustainability, have operated 

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Constitution for Eco-governance
within the paradigm framed by industrial development interests. Those representing industrial 
development have sought greater access to cheaper labour, transport and resources, and more 
consumers and consumption per capita. All of these demands contribute to a greater throughput of 
materials and energy. Those representing conservation interests have only managed to create systems 
that reduce the negative inputs and outputs. Reducing the inputs (materials and energy) by taxing 
resource extraction, or reducing the outputs (pollution and waste) by using indirect regulatory or 
market incentives, cannot convert an industrial system to an eco-logical economy [Box 49]. Moreover, 
setting taxes or caps on resource extraction and production will please 
neither
producers (lobbyists) 
nor
consumers (voters). Thus many view environmental regulation as ‘negative’, despite some good 
outcomes overall. The problem with regulation is that while it can limit bad behaviour and require 
more efficient goods and services, the restriction of bad behaviour does not create good behaviour 
or outcomes. The alternative, or more accurately the companion, to environmental regulation and 
incentives would be ecologically and ethically principled planning and design.
31
We have said, 
however, that planning has not identified opportunities for positive outcomes. The next chapter 
therefore explores means that planning (at any level of governance) could begin to identify and 
prioritize positive actions.

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