2009-07-16

"Greenest" cities

Just came across NRDC's list of greenest cites, which they actually call smartest cities. I like using 'smart' here rather than 'green,' and might try to remember to use that turn of phrase in the future.

Anyway, Seattle is at the top, which isn't a surprise. Other cities near the top are San Francisco, Portland, Oakland, and San Jose. Hmmm... seeing a trend here? Kind of a western, northern kind of vibe? Hmm.

Other cities of personal interest include Sacramento at #7 (good job Sac-town!), Denver at #9, and LA at #13. That's a pretty impressive ranking for LA considering the size of the place (and environmental problems that aren't going away any time soon).

Fort Collins is #3 on the medium-sized cities. They somehow get a good grade for transportation, though I'm totally baffled as to how that happened. Berkeley came in at a disappointing #11 in medium-sized cities. It might be because they rely on Alameda county and other regional resources, but that's just a guess.

Boulder is a small city (barely), and comes in at #2 for green building, but is just #56 overall. It's behind Santa Fe! This is quite a turn of events... what is going on Boulder???

So, go look for your favorite cities, the website is very nice: SmarterCities

No comments: