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RésuméCe texte théorique est délibérément orienté vers la mise en œuvre d’une pratique scientifique correspondant aux exigences de la notion de développement durable. Transversal, il tente une lecture de ce qui est dit et fait au nomdu développement urbain durable, tant dans le champ du politique que dans celui du rapport des sciences sociales au politique. Il est aussi méthodologique dans la mesure où la démarche interdisciplinaire proposée pour instruire cet objet complexe de l’utopie du développement urbain durable en action implique le recours à l’échelle de l’habitant et à la compréhension de la ville comme un ensemble de milieux urbains. Il appelle à une mobilisation conjointe des systèmes d’information géographique et de la modélisation, mais aussi des méthodes anthropologiques sans lesquelles il est impossible d’évaluer les possibilités et les limites de la mise en œuvre d’une politique par nature complexe, puisqu’elle doit concilier des enjeux contradictoires.

Call for building the interdisciplinary concept of sustainable urban milieuTaking Sartre’s philosophy as a starting point, our paper is deliberately both theoretical and action oriented. It aims to promote a way to develop the adequate scientific practices which the sustainable development utopia requires. To this end, it is written as a manifesto designed to stimulate debates and controversies. Following a critical reviewof all that is being said and done in the name of sustainable development in the political sphere as well as in the relationships social sciences entertain with the political sphere, this paper is a call to consider rigorously the difficulties and even the impossibilities of moving “from the utopia to the concepts”. Introducing and articulating the almost contradictory dimensions of sustainability in real urban territories demands that a relevant method be developed to investigate this complex object. We propose the concept of “socially sustainable milieu” to try and reach this objective which requires the interdisciplinary linking of physical and social sciences. GIS and modelling need to be associated with anthropological methods. Most of all, the paper underscores the need to set “inhabitants” at the heart of the scientific project, thus reversing the usual focus and starting with an investigation of the way each individual reconciles the “three pillars” of sustainable development and builds his/her relationship with sustainable urban milieus. This may help rise above the still top-down views of governance, thus enabling scientists to contribute to developing the political sustainable utopia in real sites and situations.