NRDC Releases Interactive Site
The National Resources Defense Council has just published their recent rankings for city sustainability and features interactive maps and great searchability. If you’re looking for something to write about on your local real estate blog, do a search for your own city and see how you rank and talk about what your city has done to do well or how your city can improve.
I live in Austin so we rank pretty highly for many of these rankings (although it seems fairly arbitrary how some rankings are found such as “standard of living”) so I could possibly do an entire 10 article series on these findings for our local blog talking about why we rank highly and even how it varies from suburb to suburb and why. I could go on to discuss why we rank lower in energy conservation and production and how our city can make changes (and how locals can get involved in policy change as well as in personal conservation as a homeowner).
Rankings and Maps
The NRDC ranks small, medium and large cities for the following:
- Air Quality
- Energy Production & Conservation
- Environmental Standards & Participation
- Green Building
- Green Standards
- Recycling
- Transportation
- Standard of Living
- Water Quality & Conservation
For each topic, you can dive deeper into it and apply it to the home buying or selling process and help buyers think about the growing environmentalist mentality. You can feature pictures of your city, policies your city council is debating, create a map of all of the recycling centers in your town and more. If you get stuck, go find inspiration in the NRDC “CityStories.”
Share your ideas in comments as to where your city stands AND how you or others can use this information as blog fodder.
AgentGenius.com does not have a financial relationship with the NRDC.
Missy Caulk
July 11, 2009 at 11:05 am
Thanks Lani, good find.
Ken Montville - MD Suburbs of DC
July 11, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Well, this would be good if there was anything to talk about! 🙂 It seems Washington, DC made it into the Transportation Top 10 but not much else. Odd since we’re supposed to have the second worse traffic congestion/commute time after LA. Something about walkable urban area. Tsk. I’m in the suburbs. Thanks for the heads up!!
Lani Rosales
July 11, 2009 at 6:25 pm
missy- thanks!
kent- since DC isn’t in a bunch of the “top” lists, maybe you could talk about what improvements the city could make for its residents to make it more sustainable? Perhaps talk of legislation that has passed, is currently up for debate or didn’t pass would be helpful for residents.
Dan Connolly
July 12, 2009 at 10:41 am
Wow Atlanta didn’t make the top ten for anything, guess that’s a blog post right there! Thanks Lani!
Joe Loomer
July 13, 2009 at 9:48 am
Augusta – second largest city in Georgia – isn’t in their database, dangit!
I know our air quality sucks – EPA once had us as second-worst in the country for allergens. Not enough big-box industry here to pollute, thank God.
Navy Chief, Navy Pride