Sustainable, austere, understated, resilient, smart… With environmental emergency looming, many innovative urban projects to reduce pollution and waste are popping up all over the world. But how valuable are such experiments on a global scale? What are their limitations? Can we make a city sustainable without harming the surrounding area? How to tell good ideas from bad? This work examines processes very different in nature and scale – urban objects, but also entire cities – in an attempt to take stock and envision solutions to sprawl.