Feel Good Guru

I love playing tourist in my own town. Every once in awhile on a Sunday, I pretend I’m on vacation with a couple of good friends, throw on the running shoes and go on an urban walkabout. Toronto’s one of the great walking cities. It also happens to be a global leader in urban greening. With 4.7 million residents from every country you can think of, it’s one of the most ethnically diverse metropolises on the planet. In the course of an afternoon wander in Toronto, you can truly span the globe, from Italian street festivals to dim sum in Chinatown, to Indian religious celebrations, to Portuguese Fado by the lakeshore. It’s a vibrant world-class city worthy of a long, leisurely stroll. Savor it. It’s growing at an almost frightening pace. (more…)

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With the excitement of the Olympics still fresh on hearts and minds across the planet, along with the spectacular images of snow-capped peaks, lush urban parks, sparkling ocean and a cosmopolitan urban core, Vancouver is the place everyone wants to be right now.

Named the world’s most “livable” city by The Economist, Vancouver is also working hard at being one of the greenest and most sustainable with a detailed roadmap for getting there by 2020.

A leader in green building design, planning and technology, Vancouver is actively implementing ways to improve the quality of life of its citizens while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)

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Surprised to see the medieval city of Kathmandu on the “Green Cities” list? Me too, but Richard Register, author of Ecocities and president of Ecocity Builders in Oakland, California, believes that Kathmandu and its green-receptive population is well on its way to becoming what he calls a “full-out ecocity.”

With its narrow streets, small squares and growing population, the city is becoming increasingly hostile to the car - a reality Register believes could be the catalyst for the paradigm shift necessary to eliminate the city’s congestion and pollution problems. Yes, Kathmandu, famous for its centuries-old architecture, rich history, fascinating culture and stunning views of the Himalayas is taking the stage - if tentatively - as an emerging green city. (more…)

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This densely populated island city-state in Southeast Asia was early to the table on environmental policy and has since become an inspiration for other cities (and countries) trying to achieve the difficult goal of sustainable development.

Singapore’s Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources was established in 1972 aiming to achieve environmental sustainability for the long term. In effect since the ’70s, Singapore’s anti-congestion charges have served as a model for cities like London. Proposals for radical new policies include having cars fitted with satellite tracking meters and charging drivers a per-mile fee to slash congestion. Meanwhile, the mass-rail transit is extremely clean, affordable and efficient. (more…)

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Not only do the numerous hot springs running beneath the world’s northernmost capital provide its denizens with a place to soak and relax, but these geothermal springs also provide almost all of Reykjavik’s heat and water.

Located on what geologists call a “hotspot” with a high concentration of volcanoes, Iceland gets 70 percent of its energy from renewable resources like springs and waterfalls.

In direct contrast to its name, which means “Smokey Bay,” Reykjavik is now known as the world’s least-polluted capital. (more…)

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Anyone who’s ever visited free-spirited, liberal and tolerant Amsterdam knows that it can feel like a trip to the cottage.

Cars, trucks and buses are conspicuously absent. In Amsterdam the bicycle rules.

The Dutch learn to bike as soon as they learn to walk, and continue cycling well into old age. A staggering 37% of Amsterdam residents commute by bicycle alongside canals and over 2,500 kilometers of bike paths. About $40 million a year is spent for cycling infrastructure, some of it allocated to new parking garages for thousands of bicycles. (more…)

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With more trees than people and about 8,000 hectares of parks, ravines, valley lands, woodlots and waterfront natural areas, it’s no wonder Toronto residents have long been passionate environmentalists.

Mayor David Miller, who has been first to implement many radical green policies, credits the citizens for this success. “Torontonians get it,” he says. “Our green bins program (for composting) has had 90% participation from the beginning. If you make things effective, practical, simple and realistic, people want to participate.”

(more…)

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Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is ambitious, powerful, competitive, and, lucky for Chicagoans, green. He wants Chicago to be known as the greenest city in America, and seems unstoppable when it comes to planting trees (half a million since 1989) to beautify the city and provide much needed oxygen and shade; and he’s on a roll with greening city rooftops (two and a half million square feet) to conserve energy, filter rainwater and bring summertime temps down.

Peter Nicholson, Executive Director of Foresight Design Initiative in Chicago says the mayor is the city’s biggest cheerleader for all things green. “He leads by example,” Peter says, “and he’s able to motivate and inspire people to evolve better by taking intentional action - and he rides a bike.” (more…)

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Of all “green cities” on my research list, Portland is the reigning green media darling for the past several years. Number 1 on SustainLane’s 2006, 2007 and 2008 US City Rankings for sustainability, The City of Roses comes out smelling like them, scoring good to great in almost every category analyzed by the study.

“We talked to a lot of people in the street,” says Warren Karlenzig, author of the study. “Portlanders really identify with having a high quality of life. Everyone you talk to has a definition of what sustainability means. You don’t find that in other cities.” (more…)

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Perhaps the world’s most advanced practitioner of green city design, architect and former mayor of Curitiba, Jaime Lerner, transformed his city in southern Brazil over three decades into what is now hailed by many as “the greenest city in the world.”

With the population exploding and pollution on the rise, Lerner began in the early 1970’s by redesigning Curitiba for people rather than for cars. He built beautiful parks and dug lakes to ease flooding. He risked everything by closing the main street off to traffic, turning it into a pedestrian-only plaza; overnight, shopkeepers who had fought him saw that the greenery and walkways would encourage more leisurely gathering – and more shopping. (more…)

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What, exactly, is a “green city”? Is the term not an oxymoron? If a green city is an ideal whose time has come, why, then, does it still feel so impossibly Utopian?

My definition of a green city is “a self-sufficient high-density urban area that functions in harmony with nature, where every resource used is renewable, no thing is wasted, zero emissions are released into the atmosphere; and humans and animals are treated with utmost respect.” Nope - no such thing - yet. (more…)

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