When you think of green cities, do you think of LA?

I attended a great seminar on transitional towns. Laguna Beach is a transition town, along with over 185 other cities in the world. Transition Towns are committed to reduce their reliance on peak oil through grass roots action and volunteerism. The movement is growing by leaps and bounds with no paid staff. Core groups of citizens agree to the guidelines and on their own follow an extensive procedures manual that details what they can do to reduce their dependence on peak oil. ("Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline" according to wikipedia.) You can read all about Transition Towns on: http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionNetwork

So, I wondered what cities in the US were integrating green principals, and I found a ranking on sustainlane.com. And, was I shocked! LA (28) and NYC (5) front and center. http://www.sustainlane.com/us-city-rankings/

Bet you didn't guess those cities. Oh, yea Portland was of course number 1, followed by San Francisco and Seattle. NYC, my little home town, made it high in the rankings due to their excellent mass transit amongst other things, and LA partly due to the LA River Project. Read more about this at: http://www.lariver.org/