Monday, July 2, 2007

TOP 10 ECO-FRIENDLY CITIES IN THE WORLD

According to Veg News magazine (June 2007) the Top 10 Global Green Urban Hotspots are:
(1) AMSTERDAM, which spends $40-million a year on its cycling infrastructure. Thirty-seven per cent of Amsterdam's residents commute by bike. The city is filled with bike paths. The city also has community cars and an expert recylcing system.

(2) CHICAGO where supergreeen Mayor Richard Daley aims to make his city the most eco-friendly in America. The city has planted half a million trees since 1989, implemented greening city rooftops to conserve energy and filter rainwater. The mayor passed the Environmental Action Agenda to replace 130 city vehicles with hybrid automobiles and installed 10,000 bike racks. Cycling is one of the most popular transit options as well as the city's superb public transportation system.

(3) CURTIBA in Brazil was transformed by its architect-mayor Jaime Lerner in the 1970s. With a population boom in the 1970s, Lerner redesigned the city for people not cars, building parks and creating lakes to ease flooding and closing the main street to traffic making instead a pedestrian-only plaza. The city also has an economical and environmentally friendly bus system with entire roads, highways and lanes allocated exclusively for buses.

(4) FREIBURG near the Black Forest of Germany. The city's residents in the 1970s planned a mass civil disobedience event to protest a planned nuclear power plant, raising environmental awareness and discussion about the city's energy future. Three decades later, Freiburg is a solat city with photovoltaic panels soaking up the sun's rays from the roof of Central Station, the hospital, the soccer stadium, city gardens and the local brewery. Citizens uses the bicycle as a means of transportation on one-third of their trips. The city has also reduced its grabage disposal by two-thirds since 1980.

(5) KATHMANDU, though its architecuter is medieval, its mindset is modern and eco-friendly. The capital of Nepal, the city of Kathmandu uses solar energy and solar water heaters and limits its buildings to nine feet and utilizes bulding rooftops for gardens and activity.

The rest are LONDON, REYKJAVIK, PORTLAND (OREGON), SINGAPORE, and TORONTO.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why isn't San Francisco on here? If this place were any greener, we'd be organic broccoli?

http://sfgreenmap.org/

Nico said...

What about Hong Kong?