Urban governance and sustainable city concept: Do the individual characteristics of city leaders and cities' contextual factors affect the adoption of sustainable city policies?

A sustainable city strikes a balance of environmental protection, economic growth, social equity, and infrastructure development. As urbanization accelerates worldwide, cities face mounting environmental, economic, and social challenges that demand integration of sustainability policies. City leaders, as pivotal actors in urban governance, play a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of a city. Yet, little is known about how city leaders' individual characteristics and city contexts influence their adoption of sustainability policies. Drawing from the upper echelon theory, the paper explores the influence of urban leaders' characteristics and contextual factors in cities on the inclination toward the adoption of sustainable city concepts. Using data from the 2022 Global Survey of City Leaders, which includes responses from 238 city leaders across diverse global regions, and the United Nations' World Urbanization Prospects and Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (M49), the study reveals a significant positive correlation between elected city leaders and their willingness to adopt sustainable city concepts. Furthermore, elected city leaders with longer tenure advocate for sustainability policies more vigorously than their appointed counterparts. City leaders in developed countries and densely populated cities endorse only sustainable environmental policies within the broader concept of a sustainable city. These findings contribute to sustainability theories, urban sustainability, urban governance and leadership, urban policy decision-making, and upper echelon theory, providing evidence-based results to assist policymakers in implementing more sustainable city policies in line with Sustainable Development Goal 11, which focuses on sustainable, resilient, safe, and inclusive cities and communities. • Sustainable cities harmonize environmental, infrastructural, economic, and social equity policies to create public value. • City leaders’ characteristics and contextual elements significantly shape the adoption of sustainable city policies. • Longer tenure as a standalone factor is unrelated; elected city leaders with longer tenure adopt sustainability policies. • City leaders in developed and densely populated cities are more prone to promote sustainable environmental policies. • The study applies the upper echelon theory, highlighting the intersection of sustainability theories and urban governance.