Customer Reviews

How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane U.S. City Rankings

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very well presented list of the Top 50 "Green" US Cities. The book gathers data about air quality, transportation, Green economy, Green buildings and other catergories and arrives at a average for each city. The book devotes around 2-3 pages per city, with some attractive photos spread throughout the book.

At points however, one might ask for more information in certain sections of the book, as some cities/topics are under-respresented. I found myself reading reviews of cities and wishing that there was more information about each place and perhaps more city specific information.

Overall, in my opinion, the book is very attractive and can have a place on your coffee-table, but needs a second edition with expanded information to have a place in your library.

This book is beautifully laid out, with all the criteria explained for each city. Several cities were ranked higher than I expected, due to my lack of knowledge of their "green" progress. If you want to move to where it's safe (disaster-wise), you can find it here. Or if your main thing is great air quality or any of the other rankings, there's a city for you.

I think it is more than a coffee table book, since I've spent considerable time with it.

This book is a great introduction to many topics such as how cities use resources and what that means for quality of life in the near future. I'd recommend it for people who want to learn more and start discussions about the sustainability of where they live.

How Green is Your City is systematic, but it is also imaginative in that it explores how these cities might do in a world of expensive energy, global warming, and other uncertainties that don't yet exist. Like most books that propose a "What If" situation, it's fun.

The strength of the book is that it demonstrates these topics as a guidebook of cities so you can jump around like in a tour book. You can dip into descriptions and explore quick comparisons between the cities and their futures. It's like seeing the results of a series of wind tunnel test using the same "What If" conditions, it's playful and kind of fun to flip around in. To me it felt like traveling across the country and into the future, all at once.

Numerous efforts have been made over the years to measure a city's performance in achieving environmental goals. This book is still the best.

I am originally from Germany and I would have loved to have this book when we decided to which city in the States we want to move. We chose to go to San Francisco and if you read this book, you will see it was a good decision.
Since we are here I looked several times in this book, because my husband has to travel a lot and so I can see how sustainable these cities are. I also look very often at the website from the producers of this book [...]. There you can find reviews about sustainable products and businesses. So I can for example recommend restaurants to my husband in the cities he is going to.