**1. Introduction**

 In a more globalized and urban world as well as environmentally deteriorated, it is suggested that around 60–75% of global population will live in urban areas during the period of 2025–2050 [1]. This approach leads to many problems in the urban environment, such as population concentration, shortage of housing, scarcity of resources, reduction of biodiversity, air, soil and water pollution [2].

 The final disposal of the waste is a serious issue, since it is the key element to control the environmental contamination of soil and pollution of local water sources. In past and even today many Mexican cities have disposed of their municipal waste in an inappropriate manner, using uncontrolled landfills to bury their garbage, causing a chain of environmental degradation. Solid waste management is defined as the discipline associated with the control of generation, storage, collection, transfer and transport, processing and disposal of solid waste in a way that harmonizes with the best principles of public health, economics, engineering, conservation, esthetics and other environmental and public considerations [3]. Within this scope, all administrative, financial, legal, planning and engineering functions are included.

**Figure 1.**  *Location of the study site, municipality of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico.* 

 In the last decades, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management systems have a complex and multifactorial behavior, due to large diversity of the materials that compose this waste, causing an environmental cost to cities. The technological, economic and environmental policies alternatives have caused changes in the waste management practice, which further complicates the scenario. Thus, it unleashes a new paradigm in the sustainable development of cities, at the local level but which impacts globally.

*Urban Management Model: Municipal Solid Waste for City Sustainability DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82839* 

The sustainable management of Municipal Solid Waste requires a holistic approach that considers the parties involved, their relationships and different factors of complex decision making, in a sensible and logical way. In this chapter, we introduce an Urban Management Model: Municipal Solid Waste for city sustainability, which outline a multidisciplinary in middle size cities with a total population that goes from 100,000 to 1 million people and, a territory extension that goes from 1 to 5000 m2 , **Figure 1**.

In addition, it integrates the stakeholders in the individual and group decision making in the management of the MSW, as well as the social, economic, political and environmental aspects; for which it is necessary to establish their relationships and compare them.

Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate it through an ex-ante and ex-post multicriteria analysis, regarding an environmental problem for decision making and to model it adequately, to draft well-structured strategies in the decision-making process for the scenarios future of the Municipal Solid Waste management system.
