In Canada, for example, 82 per cent of the population now lives in cities. The percentage of urban dwellers is slightly higher in the United States at 84 per cent, while Mexico sits at 78 per cent. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which tracks global urbanization trends, Canada and the U.S. now rank among the Top 50 urbanized countries – ahead of Germany, England, Italy and other Western European states.

Some cities may be experiencing booming growth, but public investment in urban infrastructure such as sewage and solid waste management, energy production and distribution, transit, and other built structures has lagged. As noted in a recent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study, this growing urban infrastructure deficit is impossible to ignore:

“The evidence is clear, both in the statistics, and in the everyday experience of Canadians in every part of the country: in spine-jarring streets and highways; in mind-numbing and catastrophically wasteful traffic jams … in the struggles of rapidly growing communities to keep up with the need for the basic nuts and bolts of urban civilization.”

The study and other research show governments have responded to the infrastructure deficit during times of crisis, spending billions with economic stimulus programs to keep the construction industry going during economic downturns or when alarming episodes of crumbling expressways and sewage floods make headlines.

At the same time, a less obvious but incredibly valuable asset of cities – green infrastructure like urban forests, local parks, healthy waterways and beaches – has received comparatively little political attention or government funding, despite its enormous value to urban dwellers.

Natural ecosystems and vegetative technologies like green roofs and engineered wetlands extend the life of many types of traditional infrastructure by assisting, for example, with storm water management. They also provide a range of additional co-benefits that improve the health and well-being of urban communities. This includes reduced smog, enhanced habitat for biodiversity like songbirds and insect pollinators, increased workplace productivity, and even psychological and restorative benefits for urban dwellers, such as stress relief.

Yet, while leafy neighbourhoods still exist in older parts of major cities, such as Toronto and Chicago, most remain largely deforested. Experts have determined that a minimum 30 per cent forest cover is required to maintain a healthy local ecosystem, yet only 18 per cent of Toronto and an abysmal 5 per cent of some of its bedroom communities are covered in trees. Indeed, despite their critical value as natural assets, forests and other elements of green infrastructure continue to be dug up, drained and paved over to make way for more roads, strip malls and subdivisions.

The consequences of this decline and degradation are far reaching. They include higher built infrastructure costs associated with managing storm water and greater vulnerability to natural disturbances such as floods and storms, as Hurricane Sandy demonstrated. Furthermore, new research also shows that people living in neighbourhoods lacking in mature trees and other green infrastructure face increased depression and other health risks.

A recent U.S. Forest Service study found that widespread infestation of urban forests and tree-lined streets by the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect, has not only killed tens of millions of urban trees, but is contributing to higher rates of death from cardiovascular and lower respiratory tract illness among urban dwellers. These are the first and third most common causes of death in the U.S.

The direct causal relationship between trees and human health is not fully understood, but scientists believe people living in urban areas are less active, suffer from greater stress levels and are exposed to poorer air quality in neighbourhoods lacking green infrastructure. Conversely, trees are so efficient at removing airborne pollutants like carbon monoxide, lead and nitrogen dioxide that Columbia University researchers estimate for every 343 trees added to a square kilometre, asthma rates in young people drop by about 25 per cent.

And let’s not forget greenhouse gases. Another recent study by the U.S. Forest Service found that America’s urban forests store an estimated 708 million tons of carbon, an environmental service with an estimated value of $50 billion. Annually, net carbon uptake is estimated at 21 million tons, representing $1.5 billion in annual economic benefits.

While higher levels of government have yet to catch on to the enormous value of sustaining and growing the stock of green infrastructure in our cities, leadership is happening at local levels. For example, the David Suzuki Foundation and more than a dozen local community groups have launched a cheeky new campaign to create Canada’s first “Homegrown National Park” in downtown Toronto. This new crowdsourced green urban corridor will be located along one of the city’s most notable “lost rivers,” which now lies buried beneath asphalt and concrete. The project aims to enhance, restore and create urban green space and other green infrastructure through planting native trees and shrubs, cultivating bird- and bug-friendly gardens, and growing food in backyards and on balconies.

Continuing to ignore the green infrastructure needs of our cities, such as local parks and naturalized school grounds, is shortsighted. Green spaces complement traditional infrastructure, provide a multitude of ecological benefits and contribute to the health and well-being of urban populations.

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The world is undergoing an enormous wave of urbanization. Students graduating today will see a doubling of the world’s urban populations within their careers. And almost all of the three billion new urban residents will live in the burgeoning cities of middle- and low-income countries – that is, “the south.” The world’s rush to urbanize is already having profound impacts on Canadian and U.S. cities, especially the larger metropolitan urban areas.

Today, 15 of the world’s 100 largest urban areas are in the U.S. and Canada. The Greater Toronto Area with 5.4 million people is the 50th largest city in the world and Montreal, the only other Top 100 Canadian city, is 87th. The U.S. has 13 cities in the Top 100 starting with New York City in sixth place.

Fast forward to 2050. Even though populations are expected to grow considerably in all cities, the U.S. and Canada will still lose three or four cities from the Top 100. Project further into the future and the Top 100 number drops even more. The projections are a little murky but a few things are clear. By 2100 Canada’s only large city, Toronto, is barely in the Top 100 list, hanging by the nails in 96th spot. The U.S. has only six. New York City is still the largest but drops to 22nd place.

Toronto is a good example of how North American cities are running ever faster yet still falling behind their global large-city peers. Linked to Toronto’s impressive growth, from 2001 to 2011 total annual passengers at the city’s Pearson International Airport increased from 28 million to 33.4 million. Despite this 20 per cent growth in annual traffic, in just a decade Canada’s busiest airport (by far) dropped in the global ranking – to 38th from 26th.

The growth in Asian air traffic swamps anything today happening in North America or Europe, and Asia is a precursor for Africa. The African continent is just getting started on its urbanization path. By around 2050 Africa will have more people living in cities than all of East Asia, and by the end of the century Africa will have as many people living in the Top 100 cities as the rest of the world combined.

Roughly speaking, the volume of Canada’s voice at the close of this century will be half what it is today, and most of the influence will come from Toronto. This is similar for the U.S., where most of the diminished remaining influence will be through New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas.

Clearly, Canadian and U.S. cities need a new approach if they are to continue to have global influence.

Not that bigger is always better, but when it comes to the global economy and international influence, large cities matter. Large cities are like stationary aircraft carriers within a country’s global power base. Big cities are the vehicles through which countries most influence global events. Big cities finance the soldiers, weaponry and embassies abroad while at home they drive the economy, patents, higher education and innovation. The world talks through its cities, and bigger cities almost always have a louder voice.

The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Buenos Aires as Pope Francis is another example of how economic heft and influence are shifting away from traditional power bases like Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Japan. This shift of power presents enormous opportunities but also threats to the U.S. and Canada. The greatest opportunity is likely not the supply of commodities and agriculture products, but rather provision of urban services, institutional support, and working together with emerging markets to help cities develop and operate in a more sustainable way.

History repeating

The rise of North America’s big cities is illustrative as history looks to repeat itself, only this time in Asia and Africa. Of the world’s larger, more affluent countries Canada was one of the earliest and fastest to urbanize. Spurred by many young rural men enlisting (and heavy casualties in World War I), Canada surpassed the 50 per cent urban mark around 1921. The country’s fast-paced urbanization manifested in many ways; for example, with so few rural workers, Canada became a world leader in tractors and mechanized farming. Parts of the United States followed the same path.

Canadian and U.S. cities also owe much of their affluence and global stature to large-scale infrastructure. Big projects like Canada’s cross-continental Canadian Pacific Railway, the U.S. Interstate Highway System, Erie Canal, St. Lawrence Seaway, Hoover Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority, and the plentiful, reliable and cheap electricity from the Niagara River, for example, all led to tremendous economic strength.

There was much fanfare last month as Toronto proper nudged past Chicago to become the fourth-largest city in North America. However, the Greater Toronto Area is still three million people smaller than Greater Chicago. Overall urban area is a much better measure of the economic and cultural heft of a city than the inner core alone.

A few strategies for U.S. and Canadian cities emerge as the world’s centre of urban gravity shifts southward. If Toronto and Chicago strengthened partnerships, for example, they would emerge as even more critical urban centres for their countries. Greater Toronto and the rest of Canada will also need to work more closely together as Canada faces increased geopolitical and climate turbulence. Miami, New York City and Philadelphia present particular vulnerabilities. Sea level is expected to rise by 0.5 to 1 metre by the end of the century and all three coastal cities are located in common hurricane track paths. Miami and New York City are respectively the world’s first and third most threatened cities with $5.7 trillion in combined assets likely exposed to coastal flooding by the 2070s.

On their own, with their provinces and states, and occasionally with the help of their national governments, as well as through city associations like C40, Metropolis and ICLEI, all larger Canadian and U.S. cities are working in some way toward greater sustainability. Their key sustainability objectives include enhanced resilience and risk reduction, securing basic service provision such as water, food and energy, strengthened community involvement in city functions and for many cities a much greater focus on transportation (as these large cities compete globally they will need to effectively mobilize as many residents as possible across the urban area).

A newly emerging sustainability priority is the building of stronger and more cooperative international partnerships. Watch for pragmatic partnerships between cities like Toronto, Chicago, Dallas and New York City with cities like Sao Paulo, Bogota, Seoul, Jakarta, Beijing, Dar es Salaam, Lagos and Johannesburg. As most of the larger-scale climate, economic and security threats to Canadian and U.S. cities are common across the world, cities have a greater incentive to cooperate.

Continued economic prosperity for North American cities is mainly conditional on how well they can integrate themselves globally; how well they are able to influence improved urban service provision around the world; and, how well the systems and institutions they develop to meet the needs of sustainable development are emulated and exported. When your voice is about to be halved it’s important to ensure that your input is pragmatic, profitable for all parties and doubly persuasive.

One challenge all North American cities have in common is a severe infrastructure deficit. Cities like Chicago, Toronto, New York City and Philadelphia are like middle-age players that became soft in the belly. Transportation deficiencies are the most noticeable, but power, water and wastewater systems are also often sclerotic. While the cities of the south need new infrastructure, North American cities need extensive and urgent improvements to existing infrastructure. As an example, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel intends to spend $7 billion over the next three years just to start addressing the city’s backlog.

As the relative political influence of Canadian and U.S. cities falls over the next several decades, a new opportunity arises. More cities in countries like China, India, Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia will need expertise in urban service provision. Building and rehabilitating cities is the world’s fastest growing market and success benefits everyone. The worst thing North America’s big cities can do now is rest on the past. Efforts need to be redoubled to build better cities in our own countries, and then to export this expertise.

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As the biggest municipality in North America to take such action, San Francisco is nudging other major cities on the continent to reconsider their own fossil-fuel investments.

It’s the kind of leadership many have come to expect from the “City by the Bay,” and according to Corporate Knights’ inaugural North American Sustainable Cities Scorecard, is indicative of San Francisco’s sustainability performance.

Of the 20 largest cities in the United States and Canada, San Francisco came out tops when measured against 27 key performance indicators across five categories: environmental quality, economic security, governance and empowerment, infrastructure and energy, and social well-being.

Corporate Knights has been ranking large cities in Canada for several years, but this is our first effort to also assess major U.S. cities. Roughly half of the indicators used in our last Canadian cities ranking have been carried over to our new scorecard. These represent a core of traditional measures that include air pollution, household spending on shelter, population density and education.

But several new and unique indicators were added this time around, and our sources of data were broadened. We also slightly shifted our focus away from goal- or vision-oriented indicators toward measuring recent infrastructure and socio-technological change.

For example, new metrics that assess urban vehicle congestion, “walkability” and cycling infrastructure – including the availability of bike-sharing services – were incorporated as a measure of quality of life as well as economic and environmental performance.

Taken together, San Francisco led the pack, followed by Washington, Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto. The bottom five included Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and – ranked lowest – Detroit. (Cities in Mexico were excluded because of poor data availability.)

Ranking cities is a notoriously difficult task, as there are many limitations to contend with. Not all cities collect the same data, and where data does exist it is often out of date or not publicly available. Attempting to fill gaps, Corporate Knights sent surveys to all 20 cities and the response rate was only 50 per cent. To encourage disclosure, we awarded bonus points in our ranking to cities that made a best effort to complete our survey.

Another big problem is the different ways data are collected and represented. For example, there is not yet a standard way for cities to collect data on greenhouse gas emissions, which initiatives such as the Hestia Project at Arizona State University are trying to address using new technologies and methodologies. It’s an issue the World Bank has run into when trying to collect consistent, reliable data on the world’s largest urban areas.

“That lack of standardized and consistent data on city performance is one of the biggest barriers to creating sustainable cities,” said Daniel Hoornweg, a municipal engineer who has advised the World Bank on urban issues for two decades. Hoornweg said getting the data right is crucial. “Just like how doctors are quickly and reliably able to monitor a patient’s health through blood pressure, temperature, cholesterol and EKG, and then compare results over time and across peers, city managers need reliable and consistent urban metrics,” he said.

The World Bank and others are putting their hopes in the Global City Indicators Facility (GCIF) at the University of Toronto. GCIF is finalizing an ISO-standard methodology for collection of city data, but progress has been slow.

Many large cities and urban areas have yet to become contributing members of GCIF, and many existing members are still not prepared to have their indicators publicly released. Cities generally don’t like being scrutinized and ranked. “Several years may elapse before information is regularly published,” according to a World Bank city data report released in 2012.

But even when data is publicly available and standardized, direct comparability among cities can still be a challenge. Is it fair, for example, to compare the per-capita energy use of cities in northern climates with use in southern climates? New research out of the University of Michigan, published in March in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that energy demand in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is 3.5 times higher than energy demand in Miami, but not necessarily because citizens and businesses in Minneapolis are wasteful of energy. The explanation is simple: “To the surprise of many, air conditioners are more energy efficient than furnaces or boilers,” according to the study. To fairly compare cities on certain metrics, methods will need to be developed that take these geographic and climatic differences into account.

It should also be emphasized again that this ranking is not based on vision or established goals. Like legendary sports broadcaster Howard Cosell, we’re just telling it like it is. Los Angeles may have committed to being a coal-free jurisdiction by 2025, but that laudable goal – and others that have come out recently from the City of Angels – doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground. What matters in our cities scorecard is when city aspiration translates into measurable sustainability performance.

We recognize sustainability is a term most people have difficulty defining, much less measuring, but we expect most would agree that it demands a minimum standard of living; a safe, diverse social network; societal institutions that support what could be termed “the good life,” for both existing and future generations; and an environment that promotes good physical and mental health.

Our scorecard does not and cannot capture every aspect of sustainability. But combining the results of the 27 indicators we have selected offers a strong sense of how our big cities perform relative to one another.

It goes without saying that, as city disclosure improves, standards emerge and data gathering becomes more frequent, the picture painted by the Sustainable Cities Scorecard will become clearer and the number of cities we track will grow.

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There are several things that changed this time around, other than the inclusion of US cities. One change is the breadth of sources collected to serve an international ranking, including international reports from the World Bank, WHO, in addition to heavy reliance on both countries’ national statistics.

Another change is a slight shift away from goal or vision-oriented indicators, towards measuring recent infrastructure and socio-technological change. We have incorporated new metrics like congestion and “walkability”, as well as cycling infrastructure, believing these affect citizens’ quality of life as well as economic and environmental performance of cities. And finally the ranking was not done with benchmarks or targets for which more than one city could get a perfect score. Our focus this year was purely on rankings, meaning no two cities could get the same score on any indicator. While making it impossible to interpret scores as good or bad, we can have a precise and accurate measure of cities performance relative to each other, a benefit that allows careful comparison of Canadian and US cities in this issue.

Sustainability – What are we measuring?

Sustainability is a term most people have difficulty defining, much less measuring, so we had to let go of the idea that we are measuring it directly. There are three main concepts of sustainability deriving from the idea of sustainable development. One is a focus on the relationships between humans and nature. It recognizes that fundamental conditions for life on our planet are sustained by physical and natural processes that are being interrupted by human activity. But if our biggest cities were to be measured with such a framework, it would be a bleak picture indeed.

Another method that can measure sustainability directly is material flow analysis. This method measures the throughput of energy and materials through a city’s economic metabolism. It requires a tremendous amount of data and as a result is imprecise even at a national level, where it is most often attempted. Much of this kind of data can be captured in a city’s ecological footprint indicator – which we unsuccessfully tried to incorporate in this ranking.

Ultimately neither of these approaches satisfies our definition of a sustainable city. We recognize that as centers of economic and cultural activity cities require constant external inputs in the form of food, energy and waste and pollution absorption capacity, and for that a certain proportion of land outside the city must be able to support a thriving metabolic metropolis. So we applied a third, broader approach to measuring sustainability – the three pillar model of society, environment and economy.

The idea is that environmental sustainability on its own does not necessarily provide for a meaningful and prosperous existence for people. It somehow does not fulfill the whole purpose of our lives, otherwise we would not have built cities in the first place. This type of model recognizes that a minimum standard of living, a safe, secure social network and societal institutions support what we can term the good life that at the same time do not undermine the potential of future generations to live the good life themselves.

So in a sense, that is what we are trying to measure. If it sounds like a lot, well it is, but we are not claiming to include every aspect of sustainability in this ranking. What we are left with after combining 27 indicators is itself just an indication of how cities perform relative to one another towards the Corporate Knights vision of a sustainable city; one that values ecological integrity, economic security, and social wellbeing equally; a city which looks to the future and promotes responsible corporate culture; a city which embraces its unique characteristic of diversity in the empowerment of minorities; a city which strives to maximize use while minimizing consumption, designing and building efficient infrastructure; promoting innovation in technology and governance alike. The Corporate Knights’ vision is a city of opportunities.

Cities – US and Canada

We selected the following 15 US and 5 Canadian cities based on their metro and urban populations. Wanting to represent as much of the urban population of both countries, with an appropriate geographical balance we opted to represent Denver over that of San Diego in California or Austin in Texas given those states were already represented.

Originally we hoped to compare urban areas covering a much larger population, given that these areas outside of city boundaries nevertheless are connected and form part of the socio-economic fabric. The lack of data at the level of urban areas made that impossible. Instead, this ranking relies on city level data as well as metropolitan statistical areas in the US, taken to be comparable to census metropolitan areas in Canada.

Indicators and Categories

5 categories (environmental quality, economic security, governance and empowerment, infrastructure and energy, and social well being) were represented as equally as possible by the 27 indicators. Each category was comprised of between 4 and 6 indicators. The categories were kept very similar to previous CK rankings so that cities could be compared and progress monitored over time. However, because our focus was on comparing cities, the overall score of each city is based on a rank, not a score describing progress towards some desired goal.

The rationale to use this set of indicators and not another was taken from the results of a 2010 review study by G.A. Tanguay et al, published in Ecological Indicators. The study reviews 17 other studies measuring urban sustainability and identifies 29 out of 188 indicators that are key predictors of aspects of sustainability. The 2013 version of the rankings attempted to include as many of these key measures as possible. Due to data access constraints for such a small geographical level as a city, we were unable to gather enough data on some of these key indicators such as ecological footprint and waterway quality. We did, however, include quantity of municipal solid waste generated, and rate of public participation in city affairs. The full list of indicators can be seen here.

The raw city scores on various indicators cannot be compared because they use different units, and a few are subjective scores based on qualitative information. For each indicator category (such as Economic Security) all indicators are standardized on a scale of 0 – 10. This was done by subtracting the minimum score from every city score and dividing by the range in scores [(X – minimum score)/range]. 10 is automatically assigned to the top scoring city, and 0 to the lowest scoring city. This means every indicator has a range of 0-10 and no two cities can get the same score. Depending on the distribution of the raw scores, these standardized scores have uneven distributions, some centering around the low range of the scale, and some on the high range. Because these scores were not fitted to a normal distribution, the scores when averaged across a category are unintentionally skewed.

For this reason we did not average the category scores and instead simply used the city rankings (from 1 – 20) added up across categories to come up with the overall results.

Results – what do they mean?

Keeping in mind what we are measuring, and how we stick to the rankings to calculate overall performance, the top performing city in the ranking can be said to be “the top performer on the 27 equally-weighed indicators when compared to all other cities measured.” We can say the top city has, on average, best met the sustainable city criteria that is presented in our vision of a sustainable city. We cannot make any conclusion about a city’s absolute performance, or whether it meets any standards or thresholds. For example, a top-performing city may still not meet an international standard to designate it as sustainable. But we can be sure that if the top city is lacking, the cities that follow will also be lacking.

Our results and some of the indicators are similar (or actually the same) as a comprehensive “Green City” study done by Siemens in 2010. There are at least two major differences, in that the Siemens study focuses more on what would be considered environmental sustainability. It encompasses environmental, infrastructure and land use indicators well. This Corporate Knights ranking is broader and farther reaching – and as a result more difficult to interpret – than that. We cover indicators of economic security, well-being, and more specific indicators of green transport. Secondly, the Siemens study averages scores across categories to come up with a score out of 100 for each city. We refrain from doing this directly.

Limitations

The main limitations to these kinds of composite indicators are data access, availability and timeliness. For example, although the ecological footprint measurement would be an excellent indicator of sustainability in concrete terms, only a few cities have calculated this metric. Not all cities report GHG emissions at community and government levels. Canada’s census survey was last conducted in 2011, but as some areas have been discontinued we were forced to use older 2006 data for certain indicators, including water consumption. A major challenge in this project was comparability between Canada and US cities, especially in regards to economic statistics. Although both countries keep comprehensive statistics, they are measured differently in some instances and are difficult to compare as a result. For some economic indicators we could not compare data directly, but instead had to calculate the anomaly from the national average, and compare that number.

Another limitation is that considerations were not made for geography and climate when energy and transportation needs may be very different between cities like Calgary and Los Angeles. On the other hand, our coverage of such a wide variety of city variables means that no one factor has a disproportionate weight on city performance, which also helps to cover the few data gaps present.

Data Sources

Preference was given to international studies with city level data. Understandably, these were difficult to obtain and do not represent the majority of data gathered here. As in previous years, Statistics Canada was a major source of data, and this year the American Community Survey, as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US were heavily drawn upon. Another data source was the 2010 Siemens Green City Survey, and data for the environmental quality as well as infrastructure and energy categories makes use of this report.

A major effort was made to retrieve direct information from city offices via a city survey. City mayors, environmental and sustainability offices were targeted to find a key contact with some cross departmental coordinating functions. The contact was then asked to fill out a survey asking for data that was either difficult to find elsewhere, or that would update and verify data that was found from publicly available sources. The response rate was 50%, and cities that completed the survey were given bonus scores that may have raised the rank they would have otherwise gotten.

Low priority was given to media reports and municipal websites, but this data proved useful when no other compilation source was available.

Several online databases were used as well. The Carbon Disclosure Project provided data on GHG emissions and targets. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) provided numbers of licensed physicians in Canada. These databases were about as often used as compilation reports. Finally, academic studies and think-tank reports also contributed vital information to this project.

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