ABSTRACT
Introduction One of the most challenging aspects in governing cities is that of managing their impacts on the environment. Cities occupy a relatively small part of the globe but the impacts of their activities go far beyond the urban area or the administrative boundary (Puppim de Oliveira et al., 2011). How best to control those impacts has no straightforward answer as the fl ows and life cycle of goods, services, and information are extremely complex. The economy may be one of the best ways to approach this problem, as the scale of economic systems has fewer boundaries than do political or administrative systems, i.e. improving or greening economic decisions in one point can lead to the greening of the economic decisions in another point. Also, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the link between the political governance and the economic systems is a key element in assessment of the greening of the economy (UNEP, 2011).
