Observation and control: the decline of the plan. Contributions emerging paradigm of sustainability

A significant channel power of new urban theories - and therefore also of critical and methodological proposals for action in the problems of the cities, their societies and territories-that call comes from the paradigm of sustainability since its inception in technical and policy around the World Summit in Rio in 1992 has become a conceptual space articulated with an awareness of finite-energy techno, a distrust of the irreversible progress of global urbanization (especially where, as in China and India, that was low) and in a field that could call frankfurtianamente critical negativity that often leads to apocalyptic jeremiads unsuccessful attempts to imagine the posurban state. Paradoxically the romantic ideal of a sustainable poscityshed in the territory and connected by different networks is less possible-sustainable from a logic of finite resources. But the contribution of discourses emerging sustainability offers anobservation and control model derived from the scoreboards certainly typical of strategic business management which tends more to the design of strategicinformation platforms to plans: platforms diagnosed acceptable or not deviations of sustainability indicators and perhaps serves more to help social protest movements that governance of partnerships between State and Economy.