Natural Home Magazine: America's Best Eco-Communities
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 01. 4.07
Natural Home magazine has put together a list of "America's Best Eco-Neighborhoods". The top ten list of the country’s top urban neighborhoods encourage the healthy, eco-conscious, TreeHugger-friendly lifestyle, boasting community involvement; shopping, libraries and schools within a walkable area; public transportation; and locally owned businesses, to name a few. The West Asheville neighborhood of Asheville, North Carolina tops the list (the WestFest celebration is pictured left, with Minneapolis' Marcy-Holmes, at number eight, pictured right), followed by South Congress in Austin, Texas (see what TreeHugger's readers think about Austin here), downtown Bozeman, Montana and Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York City. The balance of the list includes neighborhoods in cities mentioned often in sustainable town talk -- like Andersonville in Chicago and Seattle's Ballard neighborhood -- and a few that are more up and coming in the sustainability world: Denver's Highland neighborhood and Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis, for example. All feature environmental and/or social programs; parks, green spaces and neighborhood gathering spaces; farmer’s markets and community gardens; and sometimes alternative-energy programs and green building practices, and, while there doesn't appear to be a math equation or much quantification to the ranking system, each community's unique attributes make it deserving in its own right. See the full list at ::Natural Home magazine via ::3r Blogging
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From an environmental standpoint this story is a joke. If you want to save the environment the surest way is by not destroying it. Just about all of these communities are just attractive examples of suburban sprawl. And for every success story you encourage people to move away from cities and into the suburbs. Once they make it to the suburbs they drive more, require more living space and ultimately require far more energy than the average city dweller. Without question the top communities the list should be every district in New York City, followed by every other major city in America.
From an environmental standpoint this story is a joke. If you want to save the environment the surest way is by not destroying it. Just about all of these communities are just attractive examples of suburban sprawl. And for every success story you encourage people to move away from cities and into the suburbs. Once they make it to the suburbs they drive more, require more living space and require far more energy than the average city dweller. Without question the top communities the list should be every district in New York City, followed by every other major city in America.
Ummm, Fever, almost every single one of the communities listed is a neighboorhood in an existing, large city; the opposite of sprawl.
1. Asheville, North Carolina - WEST ASHEVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD
2. Austin, Texas - SOUTH CONGRESS NEIGHBORHOOD
3. Bozeman, Montana - DOWNTOWN AREA
4. Brooklyn, New York - PARK SLOPE NEIGHBORHOOD
5. Chicago, Illinois - ANDERSONVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD
6. Denver, Colorado - HIGHLAND NEIGHBORHOOD
7. Indianapolis, Indiana - FALL CREEK PLACE NEIGHBORHOOD
8. Minneapolis, Minnesota - MARCY-HOLMES NEIGHBORHOOD
9. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - MOUNT AIRY NEIGHBORHOOD
10. Seattle, Washington - BALLARD NEIGHBORHOOD
I laughed out loud when I saw the Highlands neighborhood of Denver on this list. You have got to be kidding. Green?
We've owned a rental house in this neighborhood for 15 years. We deal with neighbors who own pit bulls and throw trash out of their pickup trucks. I guess there are a couple of parks, if you don't mind the panhandlers and beer bottles.
We've seen the neighborhood improve a little recently, but green - that's a stretch.