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

How do institutions transfer resources from future to present? 
We have emphasized how land-use decisions today determine the amount of resources, space and 
lifestyle options available in the future. Use of non-renewable fossil resources, ‘terra-forming’ through 
mining and the destruction of native forests are examples of resource decisions that change the 
ecology for all time and affect future power relationships. The design of development has not only 
changed the biophysical context irreversibly, it has created many artificial, unhealthy and constricting 
environments. These interventions in ecosystem functioning have reduced the carrying capacity and 
resilience of nature as well as reducing the quality of life. Some ways of reversing this pattern are to 
design development to:
•
Be more reversible (design for disassembly, deconstruction, off-ground construction, low 
embodied energy, Green Space Walls and Green Scaffolding)
• 
Generate ‘surplus’ eco-services and create wider choices of responsible living arrangements
(ie design for eco-services) [Box 15] 
• 
Apply a hierarchy of eco-innovations, and the Green Optimum decision rule, to encourage 
investment in whole systems eco-efficiencies that make everyone better off 
And how do institutions transfer resources from nature to development?
The transfer of control from future to present generations occurs through the conversion of 
nature to fossil fuel-driven, industrialized forms of development. Industrial forms of design, to 
an extent, were guided by the values entrenched in, and perpetuated by, professional institutions.
The past consequences of industrial interventions in natural systems have reduced eco-services and 

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Reversing Resource Transfers
biodiversity, as well as human health and equity. We have seen how planning could counteract this 
tendency to substitute natural capital with machinery and equipment. ET analysis can provide clues 
for reinstituting natural systems that improve existing conditions and life quality. Some precedents 
we have noted are:
•
Planning could start from the optimal ecological use of land and regenerate the urban
ecology. For instance, many streams and rivers in urban areas have already been ‘daylit’, or
uncovered and allowed to re-generate.
21
• 
Natural sequence farming, which mimics natural landscapes in certain catchments, can 
successfully restore the soil structure, moisture and fertility of degraded farmland in some 
catchments (the ‘emerald necklace’ is an earlier precedent).
22
• 
Eco-retrofitting with eco-roofs, Green Scaffolding and so on could reverse the loss of the 
ecological base and create habitats and nature corridors through urban areas [Box 15].