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[Editor's Note: Siemens' new Green City Index for North America has provoked the inevitable comments and questions about why some cities nailed top ratings, others tanked and still others weren't counted at all. NRDC's Kaid Benfield takes a deep dive into the scores. Here is the first installment of his two-part examination.]
I may as well start with the caveat that any attempt to measure, score or rank places with respect to almost anything will be incomplete at best and can be wildly misleading at worst. First, rating systems tend to assign numerical grades to things that are partially or entirely subjective. Which city has the "best" transit service is not just a matter of coverage and service frequency, for example, but also of passenger comfort, convenience for riders' destinations (which vary from one to another), and whether the door-to-door experience feels safe, among other things.
Second, even measurements based on quantitative data are complicated. A rating of a city as "highly walkable" because of a large number of conveniences available within a short distance to a large number of people may mask that its sidewalks are actually in poor repair and poorly lit. So does one need to calculate measures (or proxy measures) of such factors? And then there's the whole matter of definition, since a "city" defined by an antiquated municipal boundary won't be the same as a city defined by actual patterns of settlement and employment (see image of Atlanta, right). And so on.
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
One of the things I find so
One of the things I find so challenging in the assessment of what is "green" and what is not is how conflicting some or the criteria are.
We think green cities should have lots of parks and trees. Sounds great to me, score that one!
We think green cities should keep transportation efficiency high. Ooops, better pack everyone together closer and get rid of the parks!
The article points out that Asian cities are 3x as dense and their power consumption is substantially less than an American city. That would suggest to me that we aren't doing enough to reduce our energy demand and need to pack our people a lot closer together!
But wait! That isn't what we want either. We really want to consume lots of things that need energy - houses, cars, public transportation, TV's, computers, washers and dryers, cell phones.... Well, we need a lot of room for all this stuff.
Doesn't "green" have something to do with energy consumption (and pollution) per capita? If so, isn't the greenest city the one that most resembles subsistence living? The one where people walk? Where paved roads don't exist (they require energy to build). The one where food is grown in the back yard? The one where electricity, if it exists, powers a few light bulbs?
Great article. You're right -
Great article. You're right - no matter study, whether its about medicine, the environment, psychology, whatever - there are always questions raised about methodology. People, as well as researchers, have differing opinions. There is no conclusive right and wrong on most occasions, but talking about methodology is imperative.
This article does a great job of breaking down the criteria of transport, land use, etc. but the theme of the article is what is most important. You hit the nail on the head.