America’s “Most Livable City” maybe not so livable
This is kind of sad. We ranked number 61 out of the 67 largest cities in the National Resources Defence Council Study.
One of the highlights, according to the NRDC: “Providing a range of less-polluting public transportation options is one of the most important actions local governments can take to mitigate climate change and promote cleaner, safer cities. Our survey focused on this issue by asking respondents what transportation options were available to residents. These included bicycle paths, bicycle sharing programs, bus systems, carpool lanes, car sharing, dedicated bicycle lanes, light rail, sidewalks/trails, subways and trolleys.”
Don’t believe the “green” hype until we see some results.
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3 Comments
These kind of rankings always reflect a pre-existing bias of some kind or another.
In this case, they appear to represent a bias in favor of lip service and “conciousness raising” with little regard to actual effectiveness. For instance, they give a city points for having a large number of LEED-certified buildings — which rewards cities with lots of new construction happening. And yet, new construction is almost always less resource-efficient than using an existing building. Also, LEED certifications do reflect building size to some extent, but there are a lot of huge, wildly wasteful, LEED-certified buildings. That’s not better than a small, older building that was built before LEED. Also, this study rewards the existence of a “sprawl reduction strategy”, but there’s no mention of whether it matters that sprawl is actually contained or not — as long as there is a strategy.
As for transportation, “less-polluting transportation options” are great, but it’s at least possible that a short commute in a single-occupancy automobile is less-polluting than a long commute by diesel bus. They shouldn’t be measuring “options that are available”, they should be trying to measure actual pollution produced by actual choices that are actually made.
How about “gallons of diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel sold within the metro area”, per capita?
And how about “number of houses torn down and landfilled in order to make room for new McMansions with heated swimming pools and hot tubs”?
Or simply “volume of trash sent to landfills, per capita”
In other words, I don’t believe the green hype for other cities either.
all valid points.
i’m skeptical of the green hype of other cities too, but there is no doubt in my mind that pittsburgh is behind the “greening” curve.
things that some people here call “innovative” or “forward thinking,” like putting bike racks on the front of buses for instance, have been in other cities for years. and they at least outfitted all of the buses, not just a select few lines that may or may not come with one.
i have to say that i was a bit surprised at our paltry rank. much of the data they cite is also most likely dependent on the city actually updating the information. considering that the brady st bridge is still on some maps, i wouldn’t be surprised if the data wasn’t accurate.
also, as far is green building goes, they did look at the number of buildings that received an energy star rating, which, i believe, older buildings can obtain thru retrofit.