12 Sustainable Cities: How Urban Areas are Going Green

What makes a city sustainable or ‘green’?

In most cases, a ‘green’ city in this post is a city that has invested heavily in transitioning to or adopting renewable or sustainable sources of energy. Another major factor in whether we highlight a city as ‘green’ is literal greenery. That is, a deliberate and successful attempt to incorporate nature into the city itself and to make green spaces accessible to its residents.

Green cities are also generally more eco-conscious and therefore more eco-friendly. They emphasize sustainability. Sustainability, in this post, has two major elements. One is that sustainability involves thinking about future generations. It involves not causing irreparable damage to the environment that harms the ability of future generations to live in it.

The other element of sustainability is whether an activity or practice can be carried on without depleting the resource in question. For example, solar power is a sustainable form of energy because using solar power does not deplete the energy of the sun. Fossil fuels, by their nature, are not sustainable. The dinosaurs aren’t making more fossils to eventually create more fossil fuels. It is possible to ‘run out of’ or deplete the supply of a fossil fuel. It is not, so far as we know, possible to deplete the supply of energy from the sun or from wind.

Another factor in making a city green is how it handles transportation issues. Cars and trucks are responsible for a substantial portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Cities that make an effort to reduce reliance on private vehicles get high marks for their green initiatives. Reducing the burden of transport can make a significant difference in the amount of carbon dioxide a city produces, since as much as 42% of an area’s emissions can come from the transportation sector.

Europe is the ‘greenest’ continent in terms of major eco-conscious cities, but the list below of cities with green initiatives spans cities around the globe. Without further ado, in no particular order are 12 major cities with noteworthy sustainability efforts.

1. Stockholm, Sweden. As I learned from a charming little television show about “Swedish Death Cleaning” (really, it is so much better than it sounds), the Swedish are quite rigorous about not dumping stuff in landfills. And Stockholm is the biggest city in Sweden, as well as its capital.

Stockholm was literally the green capital of Europe in 2010, the year it started a program to share best practices in environmental management. The city is able to maintain populations of salmon and trout in its downtown waters and it has 1,000 green spaces. It has an extensive public transportation system, starting with the Metro, the subway system first instituted in 1950. It also has congestion pricing in the city center to discourage excessive vehicle traffic.

2. Singapore is known as the Garden City and impressive for its spectacular aesthetics. The living greenery all around this densely populated city helps alleviate a problem that bedevils cities worldwide: urban heat islands. In many, if not most, cities there are areas of intense heat due to an abundance of concrete and asphalt and the like – and a complete lack of greenery. These heat islands are incredibly unpleasant and sometimes deadly. Reducing their number and impact is a big win.

Of course, all the green stuff in Singapore also absorbs carbon, which is another win. Plus, it’s good for people to be around living things. Good for health, happiness, and productivity.

3. Reyjavik, Iceland. Virtually every nation in the world has experienced what a disruptive pain in the ass reliance on oil and gas can be. Importing countries find themselves at the mercy of OPEC and the major producers. Major producers deal with dramatic price swings. Everyone deals with the environmental consequences.

One nation, Iceland, got pretty fed up with reliance on oil and gas a long time ago. When the energy crisis of the 1970s hit (fifty years ago, people have known what a pain in the butt oil and gas are for at least that long), Iceland looked elsewhere for its energy. Which it could do fairly easily, because it has so much geothermal energy right under its land surface that it can use renewable energy for a majority of its heating and cooling needs.

Icelanders have plenty of renewable energy available to them right now and plenty more where that came from. And all this homegrown green energy that does not have to be acquired from other nations makes Iceland rich. Wealthy. High GDP.

4. Copenhagen. Copenhagen, Denmark used to be famous for Hans Christian Andersen. It still is, but now it is also famous for its bicycles. If you go to Copenhagen to visit, you will say to yourself ‘Wow, lots of bicycles.’ All the bicycling will look so appealing that if you can manage it at all, you will want to go biking around the city yourself.

5. Zurich, Switzerland believes its public transportation system is one of the most efficient and reliable in the world. It certainly is convenient. Residents use streetcars and buses to get around and reduce the climate impact of transportation. Tourists are encouraged to use the transit system as well – with the result that car usage has declined. This not only reduces carbon emissions and air pollution, it also makes the city more pleasant to live and work in. You may not realize how awful traffic congestion is for your quality of life – until you don’t have to deal with it.

6. Curitaba, Brazil. This city demonstrates the benefits of thinking about transport accessibility from the get-go. The city’s urban planning ethic focuses development on where the transit is. This decreases sprawl and puts people in places where hopping on transport is almost always an option.

7. Amsterdam, Holland. Wind power! Of course, Amsterdam is going to make use of wind power; it’s in the land of windmills. More generally, Amsterdam is making sustainable energy sources a cornerstone of its green strategies.

Amsterdam and another city in the Netherland made the Arcadis list of top 5 sustainable cities in the world for 2024. Arcadis is based in the Netherlands, so take that into account (winking emoji).

8. Vancouver. Vancouver, in Canada, is well known for its green ambitions. Its 2015 plan to become a city powered by sustainable energy focuses on two main aspects of the energy equation, transportation and buildings. One element of the city’s strategy includes increasing the availability of sustainable fuels for transport, such as biofuels. Another element is increasing the supply of sustainable energy sources for buildings.

Vancouver’s green culture pays off. In 2015, the mayor of the city could point to the following statistics over the previous 25 years: population growth of 34%, job growth of 30% and a decline in carbon emissions of 7%. Vancouver recognizes that going green improves quality of life and health outcomes. Smart investment in green infrastructure should also help keep Vancouver relatively affordable in the future. Vancouver’s target is to use 100% renewable energy by 2050.

9. Melbourne, Australia. It’s all about water conservation on a continent prone to devastating fires and periodic drought. Water conservation in Melbourne makes use of recapturing stormwater by individuals and businesses. The city is designed to catch and re-use stormwater, rather than letting it go to waste or cause damage via runoff.

10. Wellington, New Zealand. Get on your bike! That’s the message the government of Wellington is trying to convey to residents. It has spent money on bike and walking paths, part of its push to become a climate change mitigation leader. A key to its approach is rigorous measurement of the effects of its efforts.

11. Portland, Oregon in the US is green in the literal sense, not just the cultural sense. It has so many parks and trees that it’s almost as green as Ireland. Well, not quite. And it’s a different kind of green, a Pacific Northwest timber-style green. But it’s still pretty damn green. And it has an extensive public transportation system so that residents don’t have to spoil all that green by taking a car everywhere. Portland is also known for the cultural value its citizens place on being eco-conscious.

For those times when public transport won’t do, Portland is also rated as an electric car friendly city. It’s not the most electric vehicle friendly city in the US though.

12. San Francisco, California, US has the highest per capital adoption of electric vehicles the nation. More generally, it’s time to give props to the American West Coast, for having 5 of the top 10 cities for EVs, including San Diego, California coming in at number 3. Los Angeles, the megalopolis between San Diego and San Francisco, actually has the most electric cars of any city in the country (17,000), but its population is so large, its per capita numbers are low. There are some cities on the East Coast with high EV adoption, such as Boston, Massachusetts, but if you want to see electric cars, California is still the place to go.

So there you have it, 12 reasons to not get pretty fed up today.