Ranking the Greenest Cities in the US: Which Cities Lead the Way?

Ranking the Greenest Cities in the US: The most environmentally sustainable city in the United States is San Diego, according to a report published Wednesday by the personal finance company WalletHub. The five greenest cities in the United States are Honolulu, Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, in that order, following the Californian metropolis.

The report compares the performance of the 100 most populous cities in the United States on 28 key “green” indicators, including green space, walking and biking scores, and per capita greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the implementation of disposable plastic bag bans.

Ranking the Greenest Cities in the US: Which Cities Lead the Way?

According to an expert statement in the report, Braden Allenby, an environmental scientist and professor at Arizona State University, “A well-managed city is also likely to be a reasonably green city.” He stated that green investments have the potential to improve the livability of cities; however, they must be implemented strategically so as not to undermine public support for green initiatives.

It is difficult to determine the “greenness” of a city due to the vast variety of urban environments, Allenby wrote in the report. He stated that academic and other “partial at best” indicators reflect a bias against anything that deviates from the established norm.

Allenby stated that attempts to evaluate the greenness of cities based on a small number of variables are therefore likely to fail. “A mayor’s office devoid of imagination would be unable to devise an indicator system that would demonstrate their city’s status as a preeminent green city,” he stated.

WalletHub utilized information from twenty-one sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, advocacy and research organizations, and digital platforms like Yelp and Indeed, to compile its ranking. Each city received a score of 100 for one of the 28 green indicators that were evaluated, and the cities were subsequently ranked according to their cumulative scores. However, not all indicators were assigned equal weights. As an illustration, the weight assigned to the proportion of electricity derived from renewable sources exceeded fourfold that of miles of bicycle lanes.

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Arizona was home to four of the five least-green cities as ranked by WalletHub. California, a leader in climate policy, was home to half of the ten greenest cities in the world.

WalletHub also consulted a number of specialists regarding which investments or policies “provide the greatest return on investment” for municipalities seeking to enhance their environmental sustainability.

Peder Anker, a professor of history of science at New York University, hypothesized that “creative regulation” offers the greatest return on investment. “The government incurs no expense for that,” Anker stated. “For instance, constructing a pedestrian street is free.” The aforementioned holds true regarding the prohibition of fossil fuel vehicles. The establishment of green cities, in my opinion, is primarily a financial concern and rather one of political fortitude.

State and local governments, according to Anker, can entice renewable energy companies and other environmentally conscious businesses by “welcoming them with open arms.” This may appear absurd, but many green companies have difficulty gaining access to local governments in order to discuss their ideas.

In addition to nature-based solutions, stringent energy efficiency and performance standards for buildings, and zoning or land-use policy, additional high-return-on-investment measures are recommended. “Some governments never use [zoning or land-use policy] tools, so they permit free-for-alls; a few decades later, we see deserted shopping malls,” said Sharon Moran, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at the State University of New York.

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