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

If low-cost eco-solutions already exist, why aren’t they being adopted?
Our intellectual paradigms and institutional frameworks, as well as power relationships, are biased in 
favour of innovations that benefit large corporations and/or bureaucracies. This is at the expense of 
reinforcing the capacity of nature to support us. The reasons are endemic and ubiquitous. But they 
all have roots in our development paradigm. Just some of the systems design and adoption issues 
that subsequent chapters will expand upon, and propose solutions for, are as follows:
• 
Available low-tech, natural solutions are obstructed by perverse subsidies and a lack of ‘full
cost pricing’. That means we do not pay the replacement cost of resources. Resource
transfers occur through economic mechanisms that obfuscate their long-term consequences
(eg externalities, expropriations, perverse subsidies, discounting and privatization).
57
These systemic biases favour innovation in existing industrial construction and production
systems (eg investment in ‘clean’ coal instead of solar energy). While we recognize 
externalities, we still ignore what we will call ‘internalities’: where developers extract
excessive benefits at no cost from the public estate. Built environment design can benefit
the general public without reducing benefits to owners or profits to developers [Chapters 7
and 8].
• 
Design is marginalized as a mere means of communication and self-expression. It is,
however, an 
alternative
‘way of thinking’ to linear, reductionist kinds of environmental
problem solving. Our educational systems have neglected design in favour of accounting
skills. Consequently, we seek templates and tools that tend to circumvent and subvert design.
Even many ‘green’ design norms are rules of thumb that avoid innovation and can actually
run counter to sustainability in certain sites or contexts. Moreover, design tools largely
predict, compare and measure the future impacts of 
given
designs, which tend to reinforce
failed templates [Chapters 3, 5 and 6].
• 
The fragmented, competitive nature of the construction industry militates against innovation 
in whole systems, such as more eco-efficient supply chains [Box 33]. Even tendering and 
designer selection processes can impede eco-logical design. Widely recognized arrangements

---

20
Positive Development
for encouraging innovation, such as partnering, performance contracting, cooperatives and 
‘charrettes’, have been slow to be adopted. Moreover, the trend is towards more mass
production of ‘engineered’ industrial homes and buildings, which are designed to sell more
products more cheaply, not to reduce 
total
resource flows [Chapters 2 and 6].
• 
Policies and programmes shift responsibility for action from those best positioned to create 
large-scale systems solutions (corporations and bureaucracies) to consumers who can only 
choose from what is ‘on the shelf’. Governments prefer indirect incentives where possible,
such as complex incentive and trading systems that rely upon markets (ie ‘carrots’ or greed).
Markets tend to generate innovation in product differentiation, not systems change. Further,
to avoid accountability, bureaucrats implement complex systems for measuring, monitoring
and mitigating negative impacts (ie ‘sticks’ or punishment). While innovation is sometimes
subsidized, what is innovated is left to commercial interests [Chapters 4, 11 and 14].
Deliberate and direct action for sustainability action is required (through, for example,
public–private+community partnerships) not just incentives for others to do something.