Small Businesses and how they connect to the Sustainable City : A list of actions for the transformation to a sustainable Paris

Abstract: The City relies on Nature‟s products and services for its wellbeing and its very existence. Smallbusinesses, the socio-economic fabric of the City, are mostly mainstream and not engaged insustainability. From their point of view, how do they connect to the Sustainable City?In one of the most competitive areas of central Paris, mainstream businesses and also frontrunners, thelatter already engaged in sustainability, were interviewed as a pilot to further explore transformationinto the Sustainable City. All were asked to reflect on their experience in managing change. They werethen encouraged to propose actions in face of the challenges of sustainability and the sustainable city,and react on a vision of the Sustainable City for Paris and its larger region. They expressed barriers tochallenges and to the vision proposed. And they also proposed ideas, expressed desires, opportunitiesand overall bridges for sustainability to be practically implemented. The findings presented theenterprises‟ interpretation of the concepts of trust and innovation. Reflecting on how the results couldcontribute to a transformation into a Sustainable City resulted in a practical list of actions. This pilotstudy showed a potential for sustainable development to emerge throughout the City through its mostimpactful yet promising actors, the small businesses.In order to contribute in building bridges between City and Nature, the exploration is inspired bysocial ecological research, looking for ways to harmonize the various elements and actors to transformcities into sustainable ones. The framework is mostly based on a business-inspired research design anda construct from the European Union Sustainable City challenges, resilience theory approaches and theFrench national strategy for sustainable development.