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

Surely we have means to measure the appropriateness of public priorities?
Yes, but not in terms of ecological improvement. Our ways of evaluating investment are highly 
reductionist measures of outputs against inputs. For example, the Landcare programme in Australia 
was designed, in theory, to empower farming communities to make improvements to the land. This 
sounds like positive and direct action, or at least remediation. The performance indicators of the 
investment in the program, however, were things like ‘metres of fences installed’ (ie bandaids), not 
positive outcomes for people and nature. Many Australian farmers have since been forced to leave 
their ancestors’ lands. The programme did not address the basic causes of farmers going bankrupt, 
or means of increasing soil fertility. However, there is now a public inquiry in Australia to analyse 
why large grocery chains have been increasing the price of farm goods with relatively little benefit 
to farmers. But this is studied in a monetary framework only. The whole community suffers when, 
despite higher profit margins on food in the grocery store, no one pays the full costs of mining soil 
nutrients. In other words, we have hidden the resource and wealth transfers by reductionist methods 
of measurement. Instead of measuring fences, for instance, we could measure the: 
•
Relative number of farmers who are still ‘unwillingly’ abandoning their farms (whereas
most economists focus on ‘willingness’ to pay)
• 
Relative soil health and productivity resulting from Landcare projects 
• 
Relative biodiversity after Landcare compared to recent and pre-farming conditions 
• 
Relative results of surveys of farmers using genuine progress indicators 
• 
Relative capacity of a farm to continue to be productive, or whether particular land might
be more productive if returned to natural habitat 
Such measurements may occasionally be undertaken ad hoc by researchers but are seldom, if ever, 
part of a holistic planning framework that encourages public engagement and debate on ethical 
and ecological issues. The next chapter explores structural principles that could assist in creating 
decision-making systems that are compatible with the fundamental ethical and democratic nature 
of sustainability issues.

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