This volume explores the governance patterns of three cities of the Americas, Seattle, Montreal, and Curitiba, which all present different but interesting  cases in dealing with  sustainable urban transport challenges. The authors study empirical  data from these three cities to analyze how specific governmental and policy instruments (planning, consultation and market mechanisms for example) were  implemented in each case. Through concepts coming from policy studies and  sociology, for example,  such as path dependency, institutional culture  and transaction costs, the three cities are also looked at in a broader perspective in order to better understand how they deal differently with  their common challenges.