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

The legal system
is not presently designed to address issues concerning environmental and
public ‘goods’, as most of its basic concepts and procedures derive from property rights
concepts or other antiquarian precedents. Case law has been slow to evolve public law
principles suited to sustainability issues. It has a retrospective orientation and requires
problems to have ‘ripened’ before they can be addressed. So legislation is needed.
Nonetheless, the courts are equipped to resolve disputes that result from jurisdictional
conflicts. Thus they could sort out territorial issues arising from the updated roles of the
other resource-allocation arenas. The highest court could be the final arbiter of disputes over
interpretations regarding the ecological modernization of the constitutional framework. 
Would the planning sphere become ‘conventional’ planning writ large?
There is indeed a danger of this. Without new methods and tools, planning will continue to simply 
manage public distress over the impacts of conventional development. Arguably, conceptual principles 
and tools could be implemented without the development of a new planning sphere. However, the 
current attempts at ecological modernization within the existing system of governance do not seem 
to be working. Examples of these contemporary approaches are as follows: integrating sustainability 
into decision-making across the whole of government; relying on greening of business and industry 
through technological efficiency; and promoting innovation and new green technology.
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Integration in government
: Efforts to introduce whole-of-government reform, where all 
departments are encouraged to integrate sustainability into their processes, do not really
dislodge existing power relationships. Each branch of government and each department
must modernize, but this will not happen by osmosis. People with environmental values are
more likely to be eclipsed by the values of those that inhabit nearby dominant-paradigm
cubicles. Denial and resistance to change is a powerful force. Without fundamental systems
re-design, mere re-badging will continue to occur.
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