When discussing sustainable development at city level, local governance is one of the most important factors and cannot be excluded among the many important aspects; economics, technology, and environment, as urban sustainability involves multilevel governance and complex political features. Using the theory of contextualism founded by S. Pepper, this paper firstly considers the meaning of 'sustainable' and critiques the use and wider implications of the word 'sustainable' throughout as envisaged by contextualism. While highlighting how urban sustainability can be assessed, this paper critiques specific methods of assessing urban sustainability. It attempts to link the critical philosophy of contextualism to the concept of local governance in terms of urban management. It then looks into the contradictory aspect of these principles using the city of Curitiba as an example. However the model of the city of Curitiba proved difficult to assess, as there are far too many factors to consider. It is felt that this case study is of use as a demonstration of the potential importance of the contextual urban model. We believe it unlikely that this will be solved in the near future, but it is important to look at it and a solution to this contradiction should be aimed for.

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