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

Artificial trees
: Machines that suck up CO
2
out of the air which can then be stored under 
ground. These would look a bit like wind farms dotting the landscape. (The inventor
described this as biomimicry.) 

---

19
Design for Eco-services
Perhaps such extreme responses are required for our cataclysmic problems?
Such extreme and expensive ideas may be explained partly by the fact that they are potentially 
proprietary and monopolistic solutions. They can be owned by corporations. Also, substantial 
public investment will be required to subsidize these radical schemes. Government R&D funding 
has increasingly prioritized commercialization potential over the public interest, whether or not the 
innovations bring cost savings to the general public (or rather, commercialization potential is seen 
as the highest public good).
54
Furthermore, these hi-tech ‘solutions’ only address symptoms.
55
The 
same focus on symptoms is sometimes seen in environmental management. Simply legislating carbon 
neutral buildings and cars, or taking affirmative action to convert cities into Positive Development, 
would be simpler and less expensive than perpetually addressing symptoms. Low-cost re-design 
strategies would generate small businesses and employment while replacing our concrete jungles 
with garden environments. The operational savings of resource conservation and reuse strategies 
would in fact pay for the capital costs of retrofitting
56
[Chapter 2]. Positive Development would be 
more equitable and sustainable without reducing anyone’s quality of life. There is no extra cost in 
eco-retrofitting, as we upgrade our physical environments regularly anyway. However, we need to 
prioritize the implementation of eco-innovations that solve ecological problems and social inequities 
– rather than creating incentives in hopes the right outcomes will occur on their own [Chapter 14].