There was nothing abstract in my definition of quality. I defined quality directly in terms of things that matter to net revenue of local businesses several times in the above posts and gave several examples (such as perceived time pressure versus ability to window shop or impulse buy).

I don't see how that is a terrible way to make concrete decisions about public spending, and I'm very not sure why you are arguing that it is. Quality can certainly be defined and optimized for, and that's precisely what I've said, and provided specific examples for. I even admitted that optimizing for quality is hard, but just because something is hard doesn't make it impossible to make concrete decisions about.