How Does Your City Stack Up In Sustainability?

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The 2008 US Sustainability Rankings are in! And while you might want to bang your own forehead into the steering wheel while sitting in traffic, your city might not have that bad of a congestion problem. Or perhaps you’d like to compare the size of smog clouds. Whatever the issue, see how your humble abode stacks up in green initiatives and sustainability with other major cities across the US. Drum roll please…

The top ten most sustainable cities are…

1. Portland, OR

10. Baltimore, MD

See the rest of the list here!

I am so proud of my current home San Francisco! Second in the nation…hell yeah! Now I’m sure you’re wondering, what makes a city sustainable? How do they judge? First SustainLane researched the 50 largest U.S. Cities and evaluated them on 16 categories of sustainability. Then they average the scores and compared the cities. Here’s how they rank.

Not to brag or anything, but here are some of the categories fab San Francisco ranked in the top four: Energy and Climate Change Policy, Waste Management, City Innovation, Planning and Land Use, City Commuting, and Water Quality. One thing we need to work on…affordable housing! Ranked 50th!!

What’s most fascinating about such a study is looking at the broader reasons why cities rank as they do. For example the most sustainable cities share certain traits: they’re all located on or near water, were built before suburbia existed, and have easy access to local food. Most important though: they’ve put green plans in action through effective teamwork. One the other end of the list the bottom five are subject to geographical factors beyond their control. The biggest problems are inland location and rampant car-dependent development.

Want to get political? Check out whether being red or blue has anything to do with being green.

The bottom line is that as much as we can green our own lives we must demand our communities to take responsibility and lead the way toward more innovation and progress. Another reason to rock your vote! How does your city rank?