Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Recently, sustainable development has become a more holistic, complex and popular concept. Worldbank and UN-Habitat agendas include Sustainability not anymore as an individual goal or branch but as a cross sectional concept. This fact not only potentializes the worldwide adoption of this over fashioned term but makes it a constant element in both national and local policies and projects. But the conceptual evolution of sustainable development, starting as a purely environmental subject and becoming a complex balance of environmentally sound social and economic development not always finds a precise translation at the local level.

This paper aims to identify which elements of the sustainable development concept stated by Worldbank and the United Nations have been operationalized in projects and policies implemented by Mexican cities governments. The evidence collected by Mexico’s Premio Gobierno y Gestión Local (Local Management Award) points to different levels of the concept’s adoption at the local governments. While there are several projects that aim to reduce exclusion, improve energy efficiency and waste disposal (Línea Verde, Aguascalientes), others are still focused in environmental issues (Climate Change Plan, Toluca) or including different elements of the Sustainable Development agenda at their Municipal Development Plans (Othon P. Blanco and Puebla).

Although more research efforts must be made to analyze why some elements are adopted Mexican city governments while others are discarded, some interesting hypothesis underline different local capacities, institutional design and basic service coverage as main elements of this heterogeneous adoption of sustainable development.