That said, such ratings and rankings are fun, because they start
conversations about what is important. And they can be useful,
especially if the authors spend some time describing the particular
characteristics that cause a place to be evaluated favorably or
unfavorably.
Overall evaluations
So, with that out of the way, let's get to the findings of a new study of 27 large American and Canadian cities
by the Economist Intelligence Unit, conducted for the global corporate
giant Siemens. By the Unit's evaluation, the top cities in their
"Green City Index" were these:
- San Francisco
- Vancouver
- New York City
- Seattle
- Denver
The least green, starting with the lowest rated, were these:
- Detroit
- St. Louis
- Cleveland
- Phoenix
- Pittsburgh
The top four certainly offer no surprises; few people would quibble
with finding them in a top ten, certainly, in some order or other. I
suppose one could quarrel with Denver at number five, but it isn't
shocking to see it there. The bottom five already make me wonder about
the criteria, though, since four of them are Rust Belt cities that,
though economically distressed, may include populations whose living
habits produce relatively small environmental footprints compared with
those of, say, sprawling Charlotte or Dallas.
(In the interest of disclosure, I should note that I am an advisory board member and a longtime content contributor to the Sustainable Cities Collective,
which is supported by Siemens. In addition, two of my very good
personal and professional friends served on the expert advisory panel
for this report. And NRDC hosts our own evaluation of city best
practices on our Smarter Cities web site. All that said, I learned about this study and report only through the media.)
Most of the largest cities in the two countries were part of the
study but some big names were not: Baltimore, Milwaukee, Salt Lake
City, San Diego, Austin, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and New Orleans, for
example.
The overall ratings are based on composite numerical scores derived
from ratings for the separate categories of carbon dioxide, energy,
land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air, and environmental
governance. While Siemens deserves credit for taking on the issue of
urban sustainability and studying some very important factors, one can
already see some issues: Couldn't
one say that CO2, energy and buildings all look at the same thing, more
or less? Where are health and fitness? Don't parks deserve their own
category (instead of being lumped into land use)? Looking at a report
where Charlotte ranks in the top 10 for land use while Pittsburgh is
nineteenth, for example, makes one question the criteria.
Speaking of which, I'll devote the rest of today's post to the
study's findings with respect to land use and transportation,
categories of particular interest to many of my readers.