The Ecuadorian Amazon encourages an approach that is neither prescriptive nor restricted to the region. A subtraction protocol might be appropriate in many parts of the world where, for instance, sprawling overdevelopment faces failed markets, where development confronts environmental issues, where it would be wise to retreat from exhausted land or flood plains, or where special land preserves are valued. While it might address the distended development of McMansions, it might also offer somewhatless -violent tools of acquisition and more safeguards against disenfranchisement in the margins of lessprivileged informal settlements. Moreover, like construction industries, the heavy industry of subtracting development becomes a new market that produces jobs and profits. Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo-the hero of years of litigation against the oil companies-is on my plane back to Quito from Lago Agrio. Yet it is more fun to imagine the architect as a non-heroic, sly activist who is deliberately avoiding the righteous solution.