Hacia una política municipal sostenible: un nexo entre la tecnología de la economía y el medio ambiente

Environmental problems have become a worldwide concern for economists, as is witnessed by the development of many theories and policies aimed at driving the economy towards a ‘sustainable economy'. The problem becomes even greater if we discuss cities. The first scope of the paper is to offer an analytical framework for ‘urban sustainable development' to present the main economic concepts that are hidden under this label. In particular, different ‘environments' co-exist in a city: the natural, the artifact and the social environment. Each of them generates positive and negative externalities for the city, since each of them represents ‘use advantages' and ‘use costs' for a city. If this is true, then it is a plausible assumption that the integration of these three ‘environments' has to be supported with specific intervention policies. The main aim of this paper is to highlight the possible intervention policies which may be developed to achieve a balanced ‘sustainable development' in terms of new policy princ