One of the greenest cities in the world is Vancouver, Canada because of the efforts they have made over the past few years to increase their green alternatives. They created the Greenest City Action Plan in 2011 when their Mayor Gregor Robertson wanted to be the greenest city in the world by 2020 because he did not want to contribute to climate change. Their vision was to create a city that had a strong local economy, inclusive neighborhoods, and a city that meets the needs of future generations (City of Vancouver, 2021). One of their biggest goals was to create sustainable transportation for all and wanted at least 50% of their population to be walking, biking, or public transit. By 2018, they were already at 53% of their population taking alternative transportation, which helped a lot with reducing their emissions. Another one of their goals was to have the cleanest air quality so their residents would be breathing in no toxins while taking their green transportation.
I wanted to include this in my project because this is the perfect example of what Boston is supposed to be doing but is not. Boston started their Climate Action plan in 2007, then updated it in 2014, and updated it again in 2019. Vancouver was able to reduce its emissions while caring about its community in nine years, while Boston keeps updating theirs because it is not working. For example, in 2018, Boston’s total carbon emissions were 6.4 metric tons while Vancouver’s was around 6.1 metric tons (City of Boston, 2017; Metro Vancouver, 2019). Of course, that is not that big of a difference, but when we started our action plan four years before them and they are already doing more, it should raise more concerns. Granted we are double their population and a big city, we are just not communicating enough as a city to get what we need done. As you can see by the two figures below, Vancouver is at a steady decline while Boston is all over the place.
