Sabine Barles is professor of urban planning and development at the Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a member of the mixed research unit Géographie-cités, where her work focuses on the history of technology and of the urban environment (18th–21st centuries), territorial ecology and urban metabolism. Her publications include L’Invention des déchets urbains. France : 1790 1970 (2005, Seyssel: Champ Vallon), as well as an issue of the journal Regional Environmental Change, co edited with Gilles Billen and Josette Garnier, titled “History of the Urban Environmental Imprint” (2012).