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Taking 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 review of 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the emergence of the "sustainable city" concept, urban issues are assuming increasing importance in research and debates relating to the environment. In order to contribute to reflection on achievements and interdisciplinary research perspectives, this paper proposes a retrospective and prospective account of city and urban analyses conducted in the journal Natures Sciences Sociétés. Based on the corpus of writings published in the journal since its inception, the author develops a critical analysis around five themes: urban nuisances and the quality of the urban living environment; local pollution and heritage management of urban living environment; urban atmospheric pollution and human health; urban ecology and nature in the city; from urban ecology to the sustainable city. The paper then shows the contribution made by these articles and considerations in the development of an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the relationship that people have with nature. This analysis highlights the heuristic potential offered by the broadening of problematics and the decompartmentalization of approaches as well as the conceptual, methodological, and epistemological difficulties and stumbling blocks of interdisciplinary approaches that link natural sciences and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]