A bicyclist travels along the east bank of the Willamette River in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Don Ryan/FILE)
Portland, Ore., tops sustainable cities list
By Eoin O'Carroll | 09.22.08
What’s the greenest American city? According to the latest annual report from SustainLane, it’s Portland, Ore.
Using criteria in 16 categories, including air and water quality, traffic congestion, access to public transportation, land use, green business activity, and environmental policies, SustainLane, an Internet company that focuses on health and environmental issues, ranks Portland as the greenest of the 50 largest US cities. The city, which was once known as “Stumptown” because of the way its land was quickly logged, has ranked first since the company began compiling the lists in 2005.
Here are the top 10 cities, with their 2006 rankings in parentheses:
1) Portland, Ore. (1)
2) San Francisco (2)
3) Seattle (3)
4) Chicago (4)
5) New York (6)
6) Boston (7)
7) Minneapolis (10)
8) Philadelphia (8)
9) Oakland, Calif. (5)
10) Baltimore (11)
And at the bottom of the list:
40) Nashville, Tenn. (42)
41) Arlington, Texas (41)
42) Long Beach, Calif. (30)
43) Colorado Springs, Colo. (26)
44) Indianapolis (45)
45) Virginia Beach, Va. (48)
46) Memphis, Tenn. (tied for 43rd with Detroit)
47) Las Vegas (27)
48) Tulsa, Okla. (40)
49) Oklahoma City (49)
50) Mesa, Ariz. (47)
Notice anything about these lists? Keith Johnson does. To live in the greenest cities, the Wall Street Journal’s environmental blogger writes, “you better have plenty of greenbacks.”
The bottom line: The kind of things that make cities “sustainable” also make them expensive. Take the rankings of “housing affordability.” The cheapest cities—San Antonio, Fort Worth, Arlington, El Paso—also scored the worst on public transit, bike-friendliness, and ability to walk to work. The big winners there are also among the most expensive places to live, like San Francisco, New York, San Jose, and Boston.
Then again, with gas prices around $4 a gallon, it’s not getting any cheaper to live in cities without decent bus and rail systems.
James Elsen, SustainLane’s founder and CEO, notes that in the past the greenest cities have had something else in common: they’re full of liberals. And the least green of the 50 largest cities are packed with conservatives. But, as Mr. Elsen noted in May in the online eco-mag Grist, this distinction is fast blurring:
<< Aerosol cans: Are they OK to use now? | MainIn that first ranking, released in spring 2005, we found that Portland came out on top, with San Francisco and Seattle not far behind. We learned that West Coast cities and “blue” cities (New York, Chicago, Boston) seemed to be greener than “red” ones. We chalked that up, in part, to the notion that modern sustainability grew out of 1970s environmentalism – often the domain of Democrats, while Republicans saw environmentalism as anti-economic growth back then.
That’s less the case nowadays, given the connection that folks are increasingly drawing between sustainability initiatives and quality of life. Plenty of Middle American and red cities have made the list, from Jacksonville to Milwaukee, and we know from looking over the data for the 2008 rankings (due out in October) that even more are on the move. We look forward to seeing more cities score higher, and we expect an increasing pace of innovation adoption across the board.
Comments
2. Jay | 09.23.08
Your theories on 1970s environmentalism seem to be skewed. Elsen is making a broad generalization. Nixon vastly expanded U.S. spending on environmental programs from the LBJ and Kennedy administrations, enacted the Clean Water Act and established the EPA. It could be easily argued that Richard Nixon was the greenest president we’ve had.
3. ZD | 09.23.08
Are we still thinking in the [left/right/liberal/conservative/environment/economy] discursive spectrum?
whew. People need to read/think more.
4. LowlyWise | 09.23.08
I have lived in the Portland area for nearly 20 years, and that it is the greenest USA city is a big surprise. With the pall of motor exhaust that covers my downtown church if we open the windows, and the choking of fumes; of the slow-moving traffic on the narrow little freeway conduits at a rush hour that lasts all day; and above all, with our farmland being systematically up-zoned for “development”–despite all this, I have to admit it’s better than a lot of places. We have decent water, dumping in the rivers is regulated (people can even swim in the Clackamas, and the fish are coming back to the Willamette, though the Columbia is mostly a big sewer). It’s about as thorny and convoluted a question as that last sentence, which I am letting stand because I have the antic disposition on.
Our much-touted MAX light rail line is lovely and convenient if you live near a stop. I once lived where it tootled by all day and all night, but to catch you had to WALK (aren’t I green?) twenty blocks west or eleven blocks east. Not nice if you are carrying anything heavier than a comb. The people who plan these things never seem to use them, yet they get their publicists to extol them as if they were heaven on earth.
Most of our parks have acquired the sobriquet of “Needle Parks” because there are so many bums and junkies hanging out in them. (I won’t apologize for lack of PC: they can clean up their act.)
We have an abundance of farmers’ markets and good groceries, and it is even possible to have your own garden if you aren’t crowded into a warren of cell-block sized and fashioned apartments. Lots of these are in imitation Noo Yawks replete with row houses and cobblestones. (Some of our local govt officials just can’t forgive Portland for not being NYC.) Oh, but they’re out in the country: I even saw a horse the other day–in a field with a big “sold” sign on it slated to be plowed up and paved over. Fortunately there is an organization called 1000 Friends of Oregon which is fighting to preserve great tracts of some of the best soils on the planet in agricultural zones. This will save the rest of Washington and Clackamas counties (in the Portland area, more beyond) from excessive ravishment through fiscal and governmental depredations. It will preserve a little of what people move to the country to get: land, an unobstructed view, places to walk and hike and bike and even ride a horse–if they aren’t all scared off by the disgustingly noisy and stinky motorized contraptions that people ride in the name of “sport.”
In writing these musings, I would note another surprise: Philadelphia is #8 on the list. I lived there for awhile, and was appalled at the lax environmental regulation–at least compared to what I had been used to in the Pacific Northwest. I have said many times since, Philadelphia is saved from being a pit only by the abundance of trees. If they were not there filtering manufacturing crud, the area would be unliveable. If I were still there I’d be campaigning to keep Valley Forge National Park intact, not sell it to the developers who covet it, as I understand the Bush administration (was there ever a more ironic oxymoron?) wanted to do. Keeping, or making, a city “green” requires this sine qua non of trees. Are you listening, San Antonio?
I will say also of Portland that it has successfully redeveloped an inner city area, the Pearl District. When I moved here this square mile at the north end of downtown was like the face of the moon, or the war zone in Philadelphia when you leave the redeveloped part of Broad Street, or like downtown Tacoma. It wasn’t as bad as Camden NJ, the armpit of the universe, but it was bad. Now it’s full of chic lofts, new buildings, much mixed use. It even has a farmers market every Thursday. It’s still pretty dull and gray, but for those to whom lawns and gardens are a drag, it’s great. Hardly the only such redevelopment in the USA but apparently one of the most successful.
Portland is not a bad place. But like our late Governor Tom McCall, I say, ‘come and visit–but don’t stay’. That includes you, Noo Yawkers: your own city is a really surprising #5 on the green list. You don’t have any more excuse to come out here!
5. Den | 09.24.08
Portland is not an expensive city to live in, my 900 square-foot 2 bedroom apt is 750 a month, and people mock me for living in a fashionable part of town. Chicago (#4)is cheaper than L.A.(not listed). So why the “plenty of greenbacks” junk?
6. Ian | 09.24.08
Maybe in comparison with the cities at the top, the cities at the bottom may be considered “conservative”. However, there is really no such thing as a conservative city - as maybe one in a hundred cities with a population over 100,000 ever go red in local and national elections. Milwaukee certainly cannot be considered red - it’s had two socialist mayors, has to my knowledge never voted for a republican for mayor, and votes overwhelmingly democratic in pres. elections. This is the case for most all cities in the U.S.
7. Ronda Chapman-Duer | 09.24.08
I hope this ranking does not leave Portlanders under the impression that all is well here. For one, the terms “green” and “sustainable” are not mutually exclusive. While this study is a nice measurement, I think the community element is lacking, as it often is in these broad-based analyses (community is one of the key differences between green and sustainable). SustainLane, please consider adding Health Equity, Unemployment, Eco-Cultural Equity and Green Jobs programs to your list of criteria. I think we would find Portland ranking a little bit lower if these issues had been assessed in this study. I like living in Portland, but I think SustainLane needs to raise the bar.
8. Ronda | 09.24.08
One last thing… San Fran, Chicago, Philly, and NYC all rank in the top 10 most stressful places to live. It’s all relative.
9. John | 09.25.08
Philly is an extremely cheap place to live; not many greenbacks needed. It’s also extremely dirty, with very little useable green/open space. These rankings are incoherent. For instance, Baltimore is a joke, the epitome of a failed city.
10. tedlow | 12.18.08
There’s a great video on San Francisco I Am where hundreds of teens in the Bay Area ditched their video games at home and headed for the biggest green festival in the nation. The Festival was held in San Francisco and the kids learned AND taught one another about climate change and green jobs. Even Chuck D from Public Enemy was there.
You can check out the video here:
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. thebob.bob | 09.22.08
It’s cheaper to dump the [Eoin’s note: Word deleted. People, please keep it clean!] out of the window into the street than to build sewers. It cheaper to pave over farmland than to rebuild inner cities. It’s cheaper, in the short run but in the end, it costs more. The environment degrades, health suffers and people abandon the place and move on. Sustainable is smart but it requires thinking and planning, something conservatives don’t seem to be that good at. They’d rather play politics and accuse anyone who thinks about sustainability of being radical hippy back to the earth environmentalists. Mass Transit? NO!!! Growth at all cost, more highways, more cars!! Yeah, hows that working for ya. If the right-wingnuts hadn’t been so interested in a ideological divisive culture war, we would have started taxing fuel in the 70’s after the Saudi’s embargo’d oil the first time. The Saudi’s would never have amassed so many of our US dollars which went straight to Islamist terrorists. But that would have required leadership, something that conservatives have failed at completely for years.
Looks like the liberal hippies were right.