Vingtième Siècle 39 (1993-3)

Cities that are durable, frugal, sober, resilient and intelligent … With environmental urgency facing us everywhere, innovative urban projects to reduce pollution and waste are emerging around the world.

But how useful are these experiences on a global scale?

What are their limits? Is it possible to make a town durable without being detrimental to its surroundings? How can we tell the good ideas from the bad?

This book sets out to explore these questions. It does not limit itself to providing a panorama of pioneering experiences carried out in nine metropolises in emerging and industrialised countries, in both the North and the South, but also focuses on different kinds of approaches adopted on very different scales – an urban object or an entire town – in order to try to assess them and identify avenues for generalisation.