Quality, Information and Design As discussed in the previous chapter, industrial capitalism is a system of quantitative development, and yet the emerging postindustrial productive forces are those geared to creating qualitative wealth. In the building industry, the conflict between quantity and quality is often quite conspicuous. The construction of more and bigger buildings, infrastructure projects and the like is often a major source not just of environmental destruction, but of the dehumanization of public space. It is no accident that a great number of the most positive contributions to green economics today have come from designers of buildings, landscapes and communities: people like John Todd, William McDonough, John T. Lyle, Jane Jacobs, William Rees, Pliny Fisk, Bill Mollison, and Stuart Hill. This is mainly because the production of quality is largely a question of design. For these innovators it has been a short step from design of the built environment to design of the economy. The prominence of spatial designers is, however, also because they are people who are more intrinsically immersed in the use-value, or material, side of economics, rather than the monetary or exchange-value side that preoccupies professional economists. Monetary budgets are important to designers, but saving money is usually a function of how well a design can make the most elegant and efficient use of materials and energy in meeting its intended needs. As industrial ecologists like Walter