Smart and sustainable city: an overview Introduction “What Are Cities For?” satirical novel focuses on a rich Wall Street trader whose life is turned upside down when he inadvertently drives into the Bronx. Charles S. Ascher once asked this question in a short paper.The Bonfire of the Vanitiesis a tale of ambition, racism, social In his attempt to answer it, he defined city architecture as “theclass, politics, and greed. molding of man’s environment to realize his aspirations—civic design, embracing architecture, landscape architecture, andTaken together, these two novels tell us many things about how engineering in a sculpture of steel, brick, green river banks,urban life has changed and how the needs of city dwellers have vistas of hills across sparkling waters; civil economy and theevolved. They also echo the way of thinking of those who, like political art of balancing the diverse desires of many to achieveJustin Marozzi, link the “roots of civilization” with cities. Marozzi a pattern for living that will lift the hearts of all.” 1 writes, “A city civilizes—it removes men and women from a savage, barbarian life. . . . Without cities there is no such thing as The word city comes from the Latin root civitas. Originally, itcivilization. . . . It is within cities . . . that humankind has realized referred to citizenship or membership of a community, but itits greatest potential: excelling in the arts and sciences, exploring now refers to the physical urban space. Cities are different fromthe human condition and leaving an indelible literary legacy.”4 other human settlements owing to their size and concentration of human beings, as well as to their functions and the specialHowever, the challenges that cities face today on behalf of all of symbolic status they derive from being the seat of the rulingus are huge: we will need to turn to cities if we are to slow down authority. Many disciplines, from anthropology to economics andresource depletion and survive. And so we will need to find ways sociology, have focused on the city. to transform existing cities into durable, resilient, and inclusive places. And novelists have also dwelt on its essence. Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. The novel is about London2 The quotes from Ascher, Dickens, Wolfe, and Marozzi shared and Paris—neither of which we look at in this ebook!—before andabove reveal the breadth and diversity of city life. The enormous during the French Revolution (1775-1792). The plot focuses oncomplexity of cities may explain why Ascher also wrote, “The art a man who leaves Paris after an eighteen-year imprisonmentof building the city of the future may be transcendently difficult. in the Bastille and moves to London. Dickens’s famous openingPerhaps for that reason able thinkers about man’s environment sentence introduces the book’s overall vision: “It was the bestshy away from it and seek simpler solutions.”5 of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was theWhen Ascher warned us of the huge difficulty of conceiving epoch of incredulity.” More specifically, the novel is about urbanthe city of the future, he was writing in 1945, a time when the life and individual hopes and expectations within a community. environmental challenges that humankind faced were nowhere near as serious as they are now. It is tempting to wonder about A much more recent novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom3 how novels in the twenty-first century will depict urban ways of Wolfe, sought to capture the essence of another city, New York,life. It is essential for us to think about how we can make smart in the 1980s. (New York is not covered in this ebook either!) Thisand sustainable cities. (1) Ascher, C.S. (1945). What Are Cities For?Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 242(1), 1-6. Charles Ascher served as professor of political science at Brooklyn College from 1949 to his retirement in 1966. https://atom.archives.unesco.org/charles-ascher;isaar?sf_culture=fr (accessed on 24 March 2021). (2) Dickens, Ch. (1859). A Tale of Two Cities. A story of the French Revolution. By Charles Dickens. Weekly serial April – November 1859, then book published in 1859 (Chapman & Hall Publisher: London). (3) Wolfe, T. (1987). The Bonfire of the Vanities. First published in Oct. 1987 by Farrar Straus Giroux. Hardcover, 659 pages. (4) Marozzi, J. (2019). Islamic Empires: The Cities that Shaped Civilization from Mecca to Dubai, Pegasus, February 2020. Allen Lane, August. https://asianreviewofbooks. com/content/islamic-empires-the-cities-that-shaped-civilization-from-mecca-to-dubai-by-justin-marozzi/ (accessed on 19 February 2021). (5) Ascher, C.S. (1945). Ibid.) 30 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021