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

Box 31 Potential of Flows Analyses
It is important to determine the appropriate method, and appropriate combination of predictive 
and performance tools before undertaking any planning exercise. While MFA (material flows 
analysis) provides a different perspective to input–output based analyses, it omits other issues.
The list below identifies some of the potential advantages of flows analyses. By determining 
areas of waste or inefficiency, and tracing these flows to their origins in social, structural, insti
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tutional and/or industrial sources, metabolic ‘maps’ have the potential to assist both the public 
and private sector in finding sources of eco-innovations.
MFA is useful as a planning support tool to:
• 
Examine aspects of urban, industrial and agricultural systems as one system
• 
Identify imbalances in resources and environmental flows at a regional level
• 
Determine suitable urban, industrial or agricultural systems for particular bioregions
• 
Find gaps or inconsistencies in input–output data and ways to reconcile them
• 
Improve trans-disciplinary communication across disciplines involved in sustainability
• 
Provide early warning systems of health crises (eg build up of toxins in groundwater)
MFA is useful in reporting and public education to:
• 
Understand the complex interdependencies of natural and human systems
• 
Make externalities visible to the public (eg toxic runoff)
• 
Link policies and actions to positive trends such as decarbonization 
• 
Assist public and private sectors in visualizing long-term consequences of decisions 
• 
Reveal where land-use activities transfer wealth out of regions (eg loss of soil fertility) 
• 
Expose the total flows through urban development, not just those in materials per se
MFA is useful as a financial support tool to:
• 
Find ways to increase regional self-reliance through import substitution
• 
Identify existing stocks of waste materials and substances for ‘resource mining’
• 
Find leverage points for systems change with relatively small investments
• 
Support the evaluation of the fit between an innovation, markets and distribution
• 
Generate quantitative information for improving efficiency and lowering costs
• 
Improve supply chain efficiencies
Ecological transformation (ET) analysis would facilitate mapping to:
• 
Help to determine the best ecological use of land
• 
Find opportunities for increasing eco-services and biodiversity 
• 
Find potential for space optimization (versus space reduction and segregation)
• 
Reverse negative space (ie privatization of the public estate) and dead space
• 
Facilitate biomimicry by comparing current and initial indigenous conditions 
Resource transfer (RT) analysis would facilitate mapping:
• 
The inequitable transfer of resources over time (eg from poor to rich, rural to urban)
• 
The contextual deficiencies and injustices that a new development might help to reverse
• 
Opportunities to potentially expand future choice through development
• 
Make externalities , internalities and unjust enrichment visible
Institutional Design (ID) analysis would facilitate mapping:
• 
Wealth transfers facilitated by economic mechanisms (eg subsidies and 
discounting).
• 
Ongoing losses of social options (eg lifestyle and life quality) through planning 
• 
Transfers of power from public to private control (eg privatization) through legislation 
• 
Impact transfers (eg pollution and waste) through design and engineering conventions
MFA analyses cannot really look at ecosystems and living things, as these are reduced to 
surrogates like energy or substances. Arguably, only design can do this (informed by flows 
analyses) by creating infrastructure and space for nature to function, expand and diversify.

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