Top Green Cities: Where to Travel Green
Top Green Cities: Where to Travel Green is part of our Back to School: Green Travel Basics series.
What are the top green cities in the world? There are plenty of others in the publishing and green world who have created scientifically calculated (and not so scientifically calculated) lists of top green cities. So I’ve put together an ultimate list of the top green cities.
Unfortunately, most of these lists are United States only lists. So I’ll link to the World lists first:
Top Green Cities in the World
According to Grist:
- Reykjavik, Iceland
- Portland, Oregon, U.S.
- Curitiba, Brazil
- Malmö, Sweden
- Vancouver, Canada
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- London, England
- San Francisco, California, U.S.
- Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador
- Sydney, Australia
- Barcelona, Spain
- Bogotá, Colombia
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Kampala, Uganda
- Austin, Texas, U.S.
According to Treehugger:
- Portland, OR
- Freiburg, Germany
- Zermatt, Switzerland
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Austin, Texas, USA
And my own contribution to the world cities list would be the World’s Greenest City: Masdar in the United Arab Emirates, which is not yet completed, but could be the world’s greenest city when it is.
Top Green Cities in the United States
According to Popular Science
- Portland, OR
- San Francisco, CA
- Boston, MA
- Oakland, CA
- Eugene, OR
- Cambridge, MA
- Berkeley, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Chicago, IL
- Austin, TX
photo credit: lg rivas
According to Best Places.net
- Burlington-South Burlington, VT
- Ithaca, NY
- Corvallis, OR
- Springfield, MA
- Wenatchee, WA
- Charlottesville, VA
- Boulder, CO
- Madison, WI
- Binghamton, NY
- Champaign-Urbana, IL
National Resources Defense Council (large cities only)
- Seattle, WA
- San Francisco, CA
- Portland, OR
- Oakland, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Sacramento, CA
- Boston, MA
- Denver, CO
- Chicago, IL
So there you have it - the top green cities in the US and in the world. You can see that the top cities remain fairly consistent across all rankings. So if you’re looking for the greenest destination, check out some of the major cities on the West Coast.
The fact that there are so many different cities listed just shows how difficult it is to define a green city. Reykjavik, for example, will use loads of energy per person simply because it’s so cold so much of the time.
If you calculated it based on carbon footprint per citizen, then places that use human powered transport more than cars would surely be fighting for a top spot. In Europe that means Amsterdam, but now increasingly place like Copenhagen and Helsinki too.
http://greenexplorer.ovi.com/getinspired/europe/netherlands/the-new-capital-of-pedal-power/
i would never say bangkok was green what so ever
hiii where is chandigarh ……. it is the world green city and india’s beautiful city also known as the city beautiful.