ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the circular model that characterizes most schools of sustainable design, while ‘revolutionary’, has basic limitations. It describes how closed-system thinking is manifested in the built environment, and has constrained sustainable planning/design. In the beginning, the sustainability movement drew attention to the problems of unlimited industrial pollution and population growth. Inspired by the US space program, some sustainability advocates proposed that the planet itself should be thought of as a spaceship where everything must be recycled. Metabolic analyses are powerful tools, but they have been conducted in closed-system frameworks. They generally limit analyses to measurable units like resource and energy. The idea of a ‘biotechnic’ society, which aimed for a balanced relationship between natural resources and development, appeared by 1970. It was argued that technological growth could support both nature and ‘plenitude’, now usually called abundance.
