Working For Jobs

by Kaid Benfield.

Cross-posted from the National Resources Defense Council.

I may as well start with the caveat that any attempt to measure,
score, or rank places with respect to almost anything will be incomplete
at best and can be wildly misleading at worst. First, rating systems
tend to assign numerical grades to things that are partially or entirely
subjective. Which city has the “best” transit service is not just a
matter of coverage and service frequency, for example, but also of
passenger comfort, convenience for riders’ destinations (which vary from
one to another), and whether the door-to-door experience feels safe,
among other things. 

Second, even measurements based on quantitative data are
complicated. A rating of a city as “highly walkable” because of a large
number of conveniences available within a short distance to a large
number of people may mask that its sidewalks are actually in poor repair
and poorly lit. So
does one need to calculate measures (or proxy measures) of such
factors? And then there’s the whole matter of definition, since a
“city” defined by an antiquated municipal boundary won’t be the same as a city defined by actual patterns of settlement and employment (see image of Atlanta, left). And so on.

That said, such ratings and rankings are fun, because they start
conversations about what is important. And they can be useful,
especially if the authors spend some time describing the particular
characteristics that cause a place to be evaluated favorably or
unfavorably.

Overall evaluations

So, with that out of the way, let’s get to the findings of a new study of 27 large American and Canadian cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit, conducted for the global corporate
giant Siemens. By the Unit’s evaluation, the top cities in their “Green
City Index” were:

San Francisco
Vancouver
New York City
Seattle
Denver

The least green, starting with the lowest rated, were these:

Detroit
St. Louis
Cleveland
Phoenix
Pittsburgh

The top four certainly offer no surprises; few people would quibble
with finding them in a top 10, certainly, in some order or other. I
suppose one could quarrel with Denver at No. 5, but it isn’t
shocking to see it there. The bottom five already make me wonder about
the criteria, though, since four of them are Rust Belt cities that,
though economically distressed, may include populations whose living
habits produce relatively small environmental footprints compared with
those of, say, sprawling Charlotte or Dallas.

(In the interest of disclosure, I should note that I am an advisory board member and a longtime content contributor to the Sustainable Cities Collective,
which is supported by Siemens. In addition, two of my very good
personal and professional friends served on the expert advisory panel
for this report. And National Resources Defense Council hosts our own evaluation of best city practices on our Smarter Cities website. All that said, I learned about this study and report only through the media.)

Most of the largest cities in the two countries were part of the
study but some big names were not: Baltimore, Milwaukee, Salt Lake
City, San Diego, Austin, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and New Orleans, for
example.

The overall ratings are based on composite numerical scores derived
from ratings for the separate categories of carbon dioxide, energy, land
use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air, and environmental
governance. While Siemens deserves credit for taking on the issue of
urban sustainability and studying some very important factors, one can
already see some issues: Couldn’t
one say that CO2, energy, and buildings all look at the same thing, more
or less? Where are health and fitness? Don’t parks deserve their own
category (instead of being lumped into land use)? Looking at a report
where Charlotte ranks in the top 10 for land use while Pittsburgh is 19th, for example, makes one question the criteria.

Speaking of which, I’ll devote the rest of today’s post to the
study’s findings with respect to land use and transportation, categories
of particular interest to many readers.

Land use

Here are your top five for land use:

New York City
Minneapolis
Ottawa
Boston
Vancouver

Bottom five, starting with the worst:

Cleveland
Detroit
Atlanta
St. Louis
Dallas

Charlotte, Calgary, and Miami significantly outranked Seattle,
Chicago, and Toronto for land use. Even Houston ranked in the top
half. Really?

As
it turns out, the scoring of each city was based on four equally
weighted factors, two of which were calculated from reported data (percentage of protected green space as a portion of total land area,
and population density)—and two of which were scored according
to expert judgment (green land-use policies such as tree planting, and
policies for containment of sprawl). I suspect that the Rust Belt
cities, which have lost inner-city population, may have been
disadvantaged in the population density measurement if the researchers
looked only within the municipal limits of the central city. That’s
unfortunate.  

In any event, there’s a bigger point to be made, though it is
relegated to the fine print of the report: “The average density for
[the cities studied] is 8,100 people per square mile, which is about 2.5
times less than for Asian cities, at 21,100 people per square mile, and
is also less than in Latin America (11,700) and in Europe (10,100).”

According to the report, Minneapolis earned its high ranking by
having a very high portion of protected space within its city limits (I
wonder how they counted the lakes), and by being evaluated highly in the
two subjective measures. Its density actually falls below the median. Charlotte made the top 10 primarily because of the strong expert
evaluation given to its policies for green space and revitalization. Among the four factors, I would have given more weight to density. 

Cleveland
scored poorly because only 6 percent of its land area is given to
protected green space (the median was 12 percent) and because its
inner-city population density is low. I am shocked that Toronto was
apparently downgraded for its failure to address sprawl, given that Ontario’s plan for the “Greater Golden Horseshoe” region around the city is one of the
best that I have seen anywhere. Any measure of sprawl containment
efforts that looks only within central city limits misses the point, if
you ask me.

I wish that the study had examined the mix of land uses (perhaps
using a measure similar to Walk Score) and, with respect to parks, had
measured access (percentage of population living within a certain
distance of a park) rather than gross acreage.  

Transport

Top five:

New York City
Vancouver
San Francisco
Montreal
Ottawa

Bottom five, starting with the worst:

Detroit
Phoenix
Charlotte
Los Angeles
St. Louis

For this category, there are five equally weighted factors. Three
are quantitative: share of workers traveling to work by transit,
bicycle, or walking; public transport supply, measured by miles of
transit network per square mile of area; and average commute time (and
this is considered “green” because … ?). Two
were qualitatively evaluated by the experts: how extensively the city
promotes public transportation and low-carbon travel, and assessment of a
city’s efforts to reduce congestion. Assuming the report is referring
to motor vehicle congestion, I fail to see what that has to do with the
environment (other than contributing somewhat to air pollution, which
has its own category separate from transport). I would replace one of
those two questionable categories with street connectivity (measured by
intersections per square mile), which we know from research is closely associated with rates of walking and vehicle use. And
where are vehicle miles traveled per capita, perhaps the most important
transportation measure of all?

Charlotte and L.A. were severely undermined by poor performance on the
quantitative measures, as one might expect. Personally, though, I might
grade them both highly with respect to qualitative policy aspirations,
given Charlotte’s superb street-design guidance and its efforts to
leverage its light rail system for transit-oriented development, and
given L.A.‘s aggressive efforts to increase transit supply (which does get
a mention). The study also rightly praises Denver’s ambitious program
of transit planning and construction, along with Montreal’s bike-sharing
program and New York’s new midtown pedestrian zones.

I am very surprised that Washington, D.C. (13th) was not ranked higher for
transportation, given that we have the second-busiest rail transit
system in the country, a streetcar system in the works, the second
highest percentage of commuters walking to work, and an aggressive
program to support bicycling (including a great bikeshare program). We were apparently downgraded by a long average commute time, which is dubious as a measure of environmental performance.

At any rate, more interesting than the individual city scoring and
ranking were some larger findings: The Canadian cities studied, for
example, have almost nine times more public transit network per square mile than the U.S. cities (6.2 miles per square mile versus 0.7 mi/sq mi). Wow. In addition, 74 percent of
Canadians in the study drive to work, as compared to 90 percent in the
U.S. cities. (Both numbers are poor compared to Europe, where the
comparable portion is 43 percent.) Unsurprisingly, the higher-density
U.S. and Canadian cities as a group outperformed the study’s average with
respect to transit usage.

The commitment of Siemens to these issues is laudable. But, as I
said at the top of the post, there are going to be problems with almost
any methodology. It appears that there are some significant ones with
respect to these particular categories. Much more valuable is that they
get us talking about what’s really important.

Next, I will look at the rest of the study. Check out the full report [PDF], and extras like the press conference announcing the findings, a slide show, and a video.

Related Links:

Bicycling our way into work and out of the Great Recession

Top 10 greenest cities in North America

Why Poughkeepsie is a great place to wait for the end of the world

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