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Thank You, Alex Steffen
Posted by Carol Coletta on July 18, 2009 |
Alex Steffen questions the rankings of NRDC's Smarter Cities rankings. Smarter Cities counts "easily-measured, but sort of pointless data," Steffen writes.
Why doesn't NRDC measure a city's per capita greenhouse gas emissions, how many miles a day do its citizens drive, how large is their average home and how compact are their communities? How much water do they use, how much energy, and how much solid waste do they generate?
"These sorts of numbers actually tell us something about how the people live, and about their overall levels of impact," Steffen writes.
This is a post that deserves to be read because it is not just the NRDC that is measuring the wrong things. As my colleague Katherine von Jan noted on her Facebook page today, "Mercer consulting reports top 400 cities to live in...#1 Vienna? Neo-Nazi world capital? Seriously?"
It's a matter of flawed assumptions that underlie too many of these "Best of" city rankings. Urban leader, beware.