San Francisco took the title as the greenest city in North American in a study of the environmental performance and commitments by 27 major metro areas in the U.S. and Canada.
The study, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Siemens, is part of the Green City Index, an ongoing research project that looks at global regions and their major cities. The index, which covers Europe (where Copenhagen topped the list), Asia and Latin America, was expanded to North America and Germany this year.
To claim the top spot in North America, San Francisco bested contenders that included Vancouver, New York, Seattle, Denver and Boston.
The 27 cities examined in the study were ranked based on scores in nine areas -- CO2, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air and environmental governance. Thirty-one indicators were evaluated across the nine categories, as shown in the chart at the foot of the page.
Here are the rankings for the cities and their overall scores:
1. San Francisco, 83.8
2. Vancouver, 81.3
3. New York City, 79.2
4. Seattle, 79.1
5. Denver, 73.5
6. Boston, 72.6
7. Los Angeles, 72.5
8. Washington, D.C., 71.4
9. Toronto, 68.4
10. Minneapolis, 67.7
11. Chicago, 66.9
12. Ottawa, 66.8
13. Philadelphia, 66.7
14. Calgary, 64.8
15. Sacramento, 63.7
16. Houston, 62.6
17. Dallas, 62.3
18. Orlando, 61.1
19. Montreal, 59.8
20. Charlotte, 59.0
21. Atlanta, 57.8
22. MIami, 57.3
23. Pittsburgh, 56.6
24. Phoenix, 55.4
25. Cleveland, 39.7
26. St. Louis, 35.1
27. Detroit, 28.4
Here are the areas in which they are evaluated:
Next Page: How San Francisco landed the top spot.
Oh my God! What happened to
Oh my God! What happened to Germany? Did it get kicked out of Europe and I didn't hear about it?
Is this for for real. I have
Is this for for real. I have been to 22 of the 27 cities and no way would I rank any of them as a clean environment. You can call it green or purple or orange it doesn't change anything. I have been in many milking parlours, hog barns, chicken coops grain elevators and they are a hell of lot cleaner than the 22 cities of the list that I have been in.
Have you ever been in NYC when a garbage strike is on. It is green from all the rotten material decomposing on the hot street in the garbage bags. Have you ever been in the big cities in August with the horse and carriage rides and smell the horse urine on the hot asphalt or concrete it also can turn light green,
Come on get real
Really bad reporting here and
Really bad reporting here and everwhere I have seen this covered. SF beats out the 26 other cities reviewed - that's it. You can't award them the "North American Crown" if they weren't compared to all cities - such as Portland, Austin, etc. They should have just picked the 30, or 50 largest - drawing some line somewhere. Instead they were "picked independently" - - what's up with that???
This may be the case if you
This may be the case if you do not include Portland, Oregon. But the study lacks credibility without it.