'A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing'. Oscar Wilde.
Financial Appraisal concentrates on private goods. Environmental Assessment encompasses public goods and has become a growth industry. But what happens, too often, is that the Environmental Assessment process squanders time and money. After a lengthy assessment procedure, projects are either permitted or refused. Much money is spent and few benefits are won. More attention should be given to Environmental Impact Design, for which the abbreviation EID is used in this book. Instead of wearily 'mitigating' the endless negative impacts of land use, projects should be planned with generosity and imagination, to yield positive impacts on the stock of public goods and contribute to community objectives. The land uses discussed in this book are at different points on the long journey from single-objective planning to multi-objective planning
[Fig 0.1] Estimates of relative progress towards fully multi-use planning by those responsbile for land management in the UK from 1945-95.
