On August 27, at Centro Banamex, the magazine Alcaldes de México presented the Best Practices in Local Government Award to 32 municipalities across 17 states. Executive president Gladis López Blanco announced that 20 of the recipients are receiving the recognition for the second consecutive year, and that 11 are currently serving their second term in office.
The award, now in its sixteenth edition, was presented as part of the magazine's 17th anniversary and brought together municipal presidents and officials from all three levels of government. El Universal Edomex reported that the 32 municipalities span 17 states with distinct economic and social realities, making the list an annual snapshot of how Mexican municipalities address shared challenges with locally tailored solutions. The ceremony also produced a catalog of replicable models for municipalities: citizen-service programs, financial management approaches, public safety initiatives, and urban services that any municipality can study and adapt. Organizers described the honorees as governments that share a commitment to meeting local challenges with innovative public policy, within the broader framework of national municipalism.
The award was distributed across five categories:
- Caring Cities, for policies on education, health, and labor inclusion;
- Economic Momentum and Good Governance, for financial management, tourism, and proactive transparency;
- Clean and Orderly Cities, for urban image, sanitation, and the recovery of public spaces;
- Innovation and Peacebuilding, for public safety, water intelligence, and digitalization;
- Productive Social Investment, for mobility, workforce training, and collective public works.
Among the recognized cases, Huixquilucan, State of Mexico, received the Innovation and Peacebuilding award for its 24/7 Municipal Communication and Emergency System, which operates more than 320 neighborhood chats serving more than 120,000 residents, according to SDP Noticias. The list also includes governments from Puebla, Guadalajara, Toluca, Morelia, Oaxaca de Juárez, and three boroughs of Mexico City, among others.
The emphasis on continuity as a distinguishing criterion points to a layer of municipal management capable of sustaining practices beyond a single three-year term. The 2027 edition will reveal whether this base of governments with stable results continues to grow across the country's municipalities.
This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.