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The capacity of eco-neighbourhoods to forge sustainable behaviour increasingly lies in measures by omission which impose a decreasing use of moral injunction. In Dunkirk, these measures have nevertheless given rise on the part of the inhabitants of the Grand Large district to a critical disregard with regard to their eco-neighbourhood. This inverted environmental conflict demonstrates how this new urban aim puts under strain the systemic approach which is the very foundation of the sustainable city. The social experience is thus diminished in favour of the private and the planetary, but faced with the difficulties experienced by these eco-neighbourhoods in producing the common good, the authorities are forced to defend their development model which is both anxiety-provoking and peace-seeking. By adopting a pragmatic pluralist standpoint, the authorities would emphasise their hegemony even more. Pursuing a contrary objective, the populations could succeed in imposing this pragmatic perspective by seeking a critical co-production of decision-making in order to free themselves from the sustainability system as imposed by the authorities.