The self -sufficient city

Still little present in the public debate in France only ten years ago, the concept of “ sustainable city “(Sustainable City) today arouses a certain interest to the State, local communities, associations, businesses, practitioners or even researchers. However, just like that of “ sustainable development “Which she is inspired by, the expression remains quite confused. Even more, the question of its operationality remains, even today, wide open. Born in the 1990s in the wake of urban ecology, in a context marked by the multiplication of environmental urban policies, the concept of “ sustainable city »Lifts several series of semantic and practical contradictions.

Defined as a completely or partially self-sufficient city, that is to say a capable city, to ensure its longevity, to locally satisfy the basic needs of its users without weighing its development costs in other territories, the sustainable city First, poses the problem of the articulation between global environmental issues and its own logics of its development. Indeed a city, if it does not wish to weigh negatively on its global environment, can permanently implement a mutation strategy “ endogenous », That is to say master the impact of its extension and favor the compactness of its development, recycle its flows, balance its consumption and its production, reduce its dependencies, even effectively adorn the threats to it ?

Defined as a fair city, that is to say a city which provides its city dwellers with a minimum of equity in access to housing and its amenities, public services as well as in protection against the risks, the city Sustainable then poses the problem of the social efficiency of urban planning procedures: indeed, if they are effective, projects, standards, taxes and eco-urban labels that have multiplied for ten years, do they take Not the risk of serving as windows or screens captured by some actors in the city and reserved for a category of population, and thereby strengthen socio-spatial inequalities ?

Defined as a democratic city, that is to say which makes democratic assent a necessary condition for its development, the sustainable city finally poses the problem of the adequacy between a global long-term approach and the classic rules of institutional functioning and the brevity of electoral cycles. The strategies of already implemented locally, combining awareness, consultation, negotiation and collective development of scenariosare they operating in the face of the complexity of the problems posed ? If it does not want to be relegated to the rank of democratic alibi, in what way can public participation curb the processes of privatization of urban space or the growing technocratization of procedures ?

The life of ideas proposes to return to these questions through a series of thematic files. The first is devoted to the question of the self -sufficient city. From the example of the Parisian metropolis, the examination of the place of agricultural spaces, the challenges of urban sprawl, the management of resources and waste, or even climatic risks, are all concrete prisms to through which it is possible to question the conditions of an urban development model “ endogenous ». The proposed contributions, from the fields of agronomy and urban agriculture, town planning, the environment and climatology, all reveal the complexity of the ecological approach to urban fact.

Summary of the file:

• Sabine Barles, “ Cities, parasites or resources deposits ? », May 25, 2010.

• Roland Vidal & André Fleury, “ Agricultural self -sufficiency of cities, a vain utopia ? »»

• Stéphane Füzesséry & Nathalie Roseau, “ Can we decrease the urban heat island ? Interview with Mireille Lauffenburger », June 8, 2010.

• Stéphane Füzessery & Nathalie Roseau, “ Should we fight against urban sprawl ? Interview with Eric Charmes », June 29, 2010.

• François Jarrige, amalgams on AMAP. Debate on alternative agrifood systems, July 5, 2010.