Austin Among Top 10 Greenest Cities

Date Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 9:14 pm Posts By Ryan Brown

Perhaps I’m biased, but it seems that every week our city is honored by one publication or another for being ‘Best for this’ or ‘Top 5 of that’. For example:

Today we add yet another honor to the list: Popular Science released a list of ‘America’s 50 Greenest Cities’. As you might guess, Austin was ranked in the top 10.

This type of data is begging to be mapped, so I went ahead and did it for them. Click on the bubbles for the ranking and a chart of their sub-scores.


View Larger Map

The rankings were based on four subcategories: Electricity, Transportation, Green Living, and Recycling and green perspective. The surveyors used raw data from the US Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide, making it fairly objective.

The Top 10 include the usual suspects (Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago) and the Top 50 include several surprises, like Joliet (as in Jake), IL and Elizabeth, NJ. Who knew? Four Texas cities made the list - Austin, Fort Worth, Amarillo, and Laredo.

Austin scored well in all categories. I was a bit surprised by the mediocre 3.3 in Green Living, however this is primarily based on the number of buildings certified by the USGBC.

Here is a link to the full article on PopSci.com: Popular Science: America’s 50 Greenest Cities

On a related note, another publication recently ranked American Cities on Greenness, placing Austin at 9th:
Austinist: Practically Verdant: Austin Named in Top 10 Greenest Cities List

What do you think of the rankings? Are there cities that don’t belong? Chime in with a comment!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Austin, Green Building, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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5 Responses to “Austin Among Top 10 Greenest Cities”

  1. Tom Tostanoski Says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 6:15 am

    I’m surprised Austin did so well in the Transportation rating. My guess is that we’ve a lot of carpoolers, as Cap Metro is practically useless, there’s no rail yet, and air quality is questionable. Heck, we did almost as well in that category as Portland.

  2. Brevard County FL Real Estate Says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 8:11 am

    I found this very interesting and I am always happy to see cities exceling in this way. There should be some sort of tax break for cities that work towards being green.

    I am somewhat embarrissed as Florida has nothing. We do recylce here and the larger cities are going to green buses. Electricity there are some solar but mostely for pools. I think we could do better in electricity and green building. Here’s to hoping the whole coutry makes the list next year.

  3. Carol McClelland of Green Career Central Says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Thanks for creating the MAP! When I first read the Popular Science article I wanted to see the cities on a map! When I came back and looked at the comments, I found you had the same urge. Thanks so much for the visual. Interesting to overlay that map with the CoolCities map (http://coolcities.us/) and the Focus the Nation Map (http://focusthenation.org/). Hopefully before too long we’ll see many more cities hitting much higher numbers. Thanks again.

  4. Brevard County FL Real Estate Says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I agree with the other FL post we could do better on electricity and building. They offer free energy audits and give assitance to make changes but not sure how many assist with this. We use alot of a/c here in Florida most of the year. It is a shame we don’t harnes some sort of different alterntive for energy since we use so much. Solar, wind and not sure if something could be done with the tides?

  5. Popular Science Highlights America’s 50 Greenest Cities : Sustainablog Says:
    February 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    [...] TX. If you enjoy a visual, an industrious blogger from Austin TX placed all of the data on a map for easy [...]

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