A new tool comparing cities in the U.S. and Canada tracks improvements in the way cities are greening, and also highlights areas where improvement is needed.
"The U.S. and Canada Green Cities Index took 27 cities and scored them on CO2, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air and environmental governance. A report accompanying the rankings looked at individual policies and factors that helped shape the cities' scores.
On the top line, the results aren't shocking. San Francisco led the list, followed by Vancouver, New York City, Seattle and Denver. The cities with the lowest rankings were mostly in the old rust belt. The bottom five were Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Cleveland, St. Louis and (in dead last) Detroit. The full list follows the gallery, which shows the cities in alphabetical order. The graphics illustrate the components of the city's overall performance."
The graphics -- included in this post from The Atlantic -- show how each city performs and compares that to the average of all 27 cities and the best performing city.
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