But with the environment, the variables at least are apparent and concrete -- wealth and production, health and safety.
For many in the procession, the grandeur of the city's concrete monoliths, its wealth and its well-dressed denizens briefly faded amid memories of humble towns in Mexico, of families crossing borders to be together for the holidays and of children playing in timeless colonial church plazas.
Los Angeles has a wealth of concrete foundations erected for sports.
Lewis quotes Francis Fergusson: "The author of the 'Commedia,' with its sustained movement, its freedom of style, its unparalleled wealth of concrete perceptions, is a new Dante".
The Third Metric conference and the American Express study demonstrate a trend — or maybe the hope of a trend — that we can reinterpret success beyond the traditional signposts of wealth and concrete achievement.
My next column will give a concrete plan for creating wealth without Wall Street.
The Treasury Department's move against Colonel Qaddafi's wealth was more concrete.
Doha's many glittering new buildings and massive construction projects are concrete testimony to its immense wealth and ambition.But its construction boom has come at the expense of the safety and wellbeing of many thousands of migrant workers.
In Sukhpur, a big village near Bhuj, the tower of the Swaminarayan temple fell, as did neighborhoods full of impressive concrete houses built with the wealth of the Patels, a caste of strivers who have gone forth into the world, prospered and sent money home to India.
"Those interests are concrete, specific, and demonstrated by a wealth of empirical evidence," she wrote.
What remains is a wealth of steel, masonry and concrete that could be recycled into flexible live/work units.
