SA's ranking in Sustainable Cities in America (Houston, Dallas: credit, construction)

[Love2begreen]

Alamo City ranks 33rd most 'sustainable' city in America

San Antonio ranked in the middle-of-the-pack among the top 50 U.S. cities for healthy, sustainable living.
The Alamo City ranked 33rd out of 50 on SustainLane’s 2008 U.S. City Rankings for cities’ ability to maintain healthy air, drinking water, parks and public transit systems. Cities were also ranked on whether they have a robust, sustainable local economy with green buildings, farmers markets, renewable energy and alternative fuels.

See entire article: Alamo City ranks 33rd most ‘sustainable’ city in America - San Antonio Business Journal:

[smuboy86]

San antonio should get more credit for the LEED program. I believe that the mcnay expansion was silver certified and the new rackspace hq is shooting for gold or silver status

[cinboerne]

Originally Posted by Love2begreen

San Antonio ranked in the middle-of-the-pack

33 is NOT the middle ... its towards the end

Detroit & Cleveland is ahead of San Antonio ???????
Wow !!!!!

[scuba steve]

In all fairness, when you look at Detroit with Google Maps it looks like whole sections of the place are kinda... gone. I'd like to see more green construction and bike paths, but a lot of what's standing right now looks like it was built before that sort of thing came along.

[cinboerne]

Have lived in the "Burbs" of Detroit for 28 years, I can tell you that any city thats falls below Detroit in SUSTAINING life ... is in trouble

[tgannaway89]

33 isn't very good at all. Hopefully we can get on track to move closer to the top with some of the planned projects (light rail, more parks, etc.)

[Steel Man]

Originally Posted by cinboerne

33 is NOT the middle ... its towards the end...

In fact, it's almost 2/3rd's from the top and 1/3rd from the bottom. Let's shoot for 1/2 next year.

[Spock's Beard]

Originally Posted by tgannaway89

33 isn't very good at all. Hopefully we can get on track to move closer to the top with some of the planned projects (light rail, more parks, etc.)

Light rails won't fix the fact that a lot of our pollution is caused by too much endless construction. It would do the opposite and make us a little dirtier.

[wCat]

My guess is that 2/3 of the population here doesn't even know what LEED rating is. That's not calling the "people" ignorant, but the city and county need to educate the public about how important LEED certification is to new and "re-newable" construction.

And being LOWER than DALLAS is not good either.

[icebrg]

wCat, why didn't you tell people what LEED is? This is an opportunity to educate a few people about the USGBC (USGBC: U.S. Green Building Council) and LEED certification. There are not many people outside of the architecture, engineering and construction industry that are familiar with this organization or its project certification system.

The acronym LEED stands for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" and is a Green Building Rating System that has become the industry standard for criteria that must be met for achieving levels of sustainable building status in design, construction and operation of buildings in the US. There are four levels of certification a project can obtain based on the number of credits the project has attained, which are LEED, LEED Silver, LEED Gold and LEED Platinum. The system was developed by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) an non-profit organization that is dedicated to the education and expansion of green building practices. The organization also has developed a set of standards for accrediting professionals in green building practices, known as LEED AP.

The real reasons San Antonio ranks so low are rampant sprawl, poorly regulated development over the city's sole source of water, lack of building codes that require even the minimum sustainable practices for buildings in the private or public sector and no comprehensive plan for implementation of a light rail system, something Dallas, Houston and Austin have. San Antonio also does not have a comprehensive recycling and composting program nor does the city require the use of cleaner burning fuels or emission testing, which are not required by the federal government or the state because the air is not polluted enough yet. Why wait for the pollution to get so bad before something is done about it? Texas as a whole is not proactive enough about it's environmental policies; it is time for that to change. Contact your elected officials and ask them enact policy before the problems are beyond repair.