Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one‐third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.

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Voluntary cooperative arrangements are increasingly being established among local governments for economic development purposes. This article extends the institutional collective action framework to economic development to investigate the conditions under which local government units overcome transaction costs to establish joint ventures. Data were derived from a survey of intergovernmental relations for 206 local governments with a population of 10,000 or more in 12 metropolitan areas. The findings of a logistic regression analysis indicate that endogenous resources, such as cooperative norms and trust, as well as the local and regional context, influence cooperation.

Environmental sustainability is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. A number of explanations have been advanced for why some local governments make strong commitments to sustainability while others do not. Most of the extant empirical research, however, has relied on models that employ only one or just a few of these explanations. As a result, empirical analyses do not encompass a comprehensive set of variables that account for alternative explanations. This study begins to fill this lacuna by specifying an empirical model that examines six explanations for local commitment towards sustainability: local sustainability priorities, regional governance, climate protection networks, interest group support, local fiscal capacity, and characteristics of the local governing institution. Moreover, we use the designation of human and financial resources specifically for sustainability to operationalise commitment. This is a more substantive measure than has been used in previous studies. We accomplish this by utilising data from the Integrated City Sustainability Database. Our results indicate that local priorities, participation in regional governance, and membership in climate protection networks influence the likelihood of cities’ devotion of resources to sustainability. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.