City Sustainability Rankings

[Subdude]

I found this on another forum, and thought it was interesting, if disturbing.

Rankings:

In November 2004, SustainLane began to take a look at 25 US cities across 12 major categories, to measure their relative levels of sustainability, and in the process create the most comprehensive study done to date on the topic.

Link to the full article.

[Lowbrow]

Hey I saw a Houston "City Works" vehicle that was a hybrid (Prius) the other day. We're turning this megatropolis around! (minor sarcasm)

[jghall00]

I found this on another forum, and thought it was interesting, if disturbing. 

Rankings:

In November 2004, SustainLane began to take a look at 25 US cities across 12 major categories, to measure their relative levels of sustainability, and in the process create the most comprehensive study done to date on the topic.

Link to the full article. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The study obviously didn't take the cost of housing into account. While there's definitely an expense associated with sustainability, in some places it's excessive. Case in point San Fran. What normal family can afford to live there? My friend is an attorney there, even she complains about the housing cost! When a city pushes people away because it's too expensive...that's not sustainable. Having said that, Houston is a mess

[Lowbrow]

(Quoted from same site)

"#25 Houston (Total score 18.93)

Summary: Houston fell into the #25 spot for overall sustainability out of 25 U.S. cities, and was statistically in a class by itself. Its score was almost four times worse than leading cities Portland and San Francisco.

.................................

Houston (pop. 1,953,631) is playing out the oil endgame like it was the only game in town. The city was built on oil and it shows. Other cities typically have one bypass freeway around them. Car-crazy Houston, however, has three concentric rings to accommodate the crazy-quilt patchwork of strip malls and mini mansions growing at its exurban edges. The city tied for #19 in transportation, with about 6% using public transit to commute to work. Tap water ranks #19 and air quality is #21, with the city

[jm1fd]

This sounds to me like the liberal pot smoking hippie sustainability survey....

Houston (pop. 1,953,631) is playing out the oil endgame like it was the only game in town. The city was built on oil and it shows. Other cities typically have one bypass freeway around them. Car-crazy Houston, however, has three concentric rings to accommodate the crazy-quilt patchwork of strip malls and mini mansions growing at its exurban edges. The city tied for #19 in transportation, with about 6% using public transit to commute to work. Tap water ranks #19 and air quality is #21, with the city

[LTAWACS]

Which building is this LEED building?

Wasn't the dead AIM tower supposed to be LEED also?

[firstngoal]

I found this on another forum, and thought it was interesting, if disturbing. 

Rankings:

In November 2004, SustainLane began to take a look at 25 US cities across 12 major categories, to measure their relative levels of sustainability, and in the process create the most comprehensive study done to date on the topic.

Link to the full article. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I took a look at this, and I know it sounds defensive, but I think they are really overly harsh with Houston. I will be writing them about their methodology... and what appears to be some major misperceptions with our town. For example - they complain that only 6% of our population takes public transportation - do you guys know that replicates the ridership level in the always-praised Portland, Oregon? We get an N/A on knowledge-base... excuse me, but with NASA, the Texas Medical Center (the largest of its kind in the world), engineering and architecture firms galore, headquarter operations for 22 Fortune 500 companies, etc... we aren't a bunch of dummies. Furthermore, we have a mayor in office who has shown a lot of attention to issues such as quality of life and environmental protection... but none of this is mentioned. Just freeways and oil, in their eyes... interesting that LA ranks so much higher but has very similar characteristics with Houston.

Anyway, their research on Houston seemed really lacking - and based much on opinion and heresay. Detroit more economically sustainable than Houston? - yeah, right. C'mon - almost every measure of economic performance proves that wrong! Houston's not perfect by any means, but I am really tired of the bashing.

[Lowbrow]

Which building is this LEED building?

Wasn't the dead AIM tower supposed to be LEED also?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm sure its the new nursing school.

[GovernorAggie]

I got into this subject area once, but I will restate some ideas about this "sustainability" issue. There is not such thing as a sustainable city. These indices look at the area's immediate environmental impacts and that is short-sighted if not foolish. Look at the survey--Austin more sustainable than Alb and Chattanooga--two much smaller metropolitan areas? I call garbage on this one. Anyone who even remotely is honest with themselves will acknowledge that the true sustainability resides with the city's ecological footprint. When you throw that into the equation, none of these places are "sustainable".

What does the ecological footprint have to do with environmental sustainability? Everything. Is SF more sustainable than Houston b/c of traffic, smog, wastewater, etc? Not necessarily. Even though SF takes up very little land, it's gotta get water from somewhere. The electricity to power everything in that dense place has to come from somewhere. Ok, so the city itself isn't polluted, but the locations that provide power to SF are suffering (whether through coal power or hydroelectric power).

These things come out for people to make themselves feel good and validated. The truth is that they are showing how good they are at puttting their garbage at someone else's doorstep.

I also see that out of the 25 cities that were contacted, one city failed to respond and another responded only in part--Houston and Detroit.

Now, I know from a research project that I did while at A&M that involved contacting cities, several met my criteria but I only got a small response. Those who did not respond (hence who I could not get the needed information from that only they could provide) were left out of the project and thus the final writings. They admit to using 8 of the 12 categories for these two cities, but then chucking them into the same scoring, which I think is unfair because I think that the four categories (those without readily accessible data) could affect those scores. The best thing to do would have been to leave those cities out.

Lastly, SustainLane is based in the San Francisco Bay area.

Their website says "There is an old saying,

[Original Timmy Chan's]

Houston's best score was for ZONING, beating out a number of other cities...obviously this study was well-researched.

Also, Houston gets knocked for having three concentric freeways around town (610, BW8 and Grand Pkwy), while "other cities typically have one bypass freeway around them." Well, HELLO! You're comparing us to cities like Madison, WI, Chattanooga, Scottsdale, Berkeley and Santa Monica, which all have 1/10th the population of Houston (and less in many cases)!

What a screwy survey. Denver gets high marks for voting in a light rail system...Houston did the same, but we're blasted in transportation.

How about this one: "Lake Michigan water receives very good grades from water quality experts, ranking Chicago as #2 in this category in our study." Is Lake Michigan appreciably cleaner than Lake Houston? Of course the difference between tap water (after treatment) from city to city is splitting hairs. It's all clean water once it's treated.

[N8TIV]

This study is really screwed up. It has no value.

What it really sounds like is an environmentalist who just got dumped by his cyber "significant other" living in Houston.

[citykid09]

Yeah! Someone just wants to pick on Houston.

[Sunstar]

I find it interesting that the most sustainable city in this study is built on a major fault line. All things considered, I feel pretty good about Houston's sustainability by comparison.

[The Great Hizzy!]

LMAO

It would help to be a little less obvious when putting out such a "report."

Gimmie a break. Take a look at a map of the Bay Area. What the hell do they thing those wide, concrete passages are? Natural stone gardens? How about Los Angeles? New York? Lots of freeways, my friend. Whether they go round, through, zig-zaggly or at a 90 degree angle to each other, you are inundated by concrete in those fine 'burbs as well.

LMAO!!

Frankly, I pick at people like this. You want to help society, fine, I'm with you. If you want to play politics, I can't help but render you a nimrod.

[LTAWACS]

Yeah! Someone just wants to pick on Houston.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Perhaps we should annex them to teach them a lesson.

[dbigtex56]

When the next earthquake reduces San Francisco to a smoldering heap of rubble, how 'sustainable' will it be?

This is social commentary defended with junk science.

[HeightsGuy]

Well, whether the data is flawed or not, I think one can assume that molding it any way you can won't put Houston at the top of this list or any list regarding sustainability.

If any of you are really interested in this topic, perhaps you should spend Saturday night at the Artery:

Solutions for a Sustainable Houston conversation

BTW, if you have never been to the Artery, you really should go sometime. It's in the general Midtwon area:

The Artery

[kjb434]

And what are they always trying to sustain?

The first thing I did when I saw the first post was to find out the methodology of this study. Once they mentioned with conducted with a phone survey and Houston didn't have enough reponses, I knew it was a bunch of bunk. I surprised it hasn't been plastered all over the news already.

Because you know how the news media works, any press that is bad for Texas and Houston is good press.

[SpringTX]

I agree that there appears to be a big element of politics in their findings regarding Houston. Houston, "capital" of the "Red States", home of the Bush family and their "anti-environmental" presidencies, big oil, and individual freedoms is a tempting target for a group of people who have spent their lives fighting for environmental controls, and are proud of it, and think their cities superior for doing so. So the West Coast and their progressive environmental controls are "superior", and Houston is about to implode from its automobile and refinery emissions?

"Houston is playing out the oil endgame like it was the only game in town". I thought the big energy companies were pouring massive sums of money into research and development of new forms of energy so that they're not left behind in the future. So how did these experts arrive at their conclusion? And that's not even part of what they were studying, is it?

"three farmers

[Arivechi]

I find it interesting that the most sustainable city in this study is built on a major fault line. All things considered, I feel pretty good about Houston's sustainability by comparison.

While no fault around here is capable of producing a single large earthquake like a "big one" there are still plenty of faults through the Houston and Gulf Coast area causing daily damage to roads and pipelines and foundations. The land is slowly sliding toward the Gulf in big pieces. The cost of fixing this damage over and over may not add up to recovery from a San Andreas event but property owners and your local governments are constantly throwing $$$ at mending the cracks and bumps.