VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - If Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson wants to make our city the greenest in the world in 10 years, he'll have to beat out Portland. The latest international rankings place 'The City of Roses' second on the list of the world's greenest cities, while Vancouver ranks number five.
Robertson told the GLOBE 2010 Conference about his plans to make Vancouver the top 'green' city. Both Vancouver and Portland have pro-green sustainable development and both are doing their best to attract 'green' businesses.
However Christine Llobregat from the City of Portland suspects the reason her community ranks higher is that it decided to use environmentally friendly city planning 40 years ago. "So they really had a more forward looking vision towards their land use policies implementing an urban growth boundary requiring density and setting a strong precedent for sustainable development."
Llobregat says Portland was also the first U.S. city to have a global climate change plan back in the early 1990's, and that has cut greenhouse emissions by 15 per cent per person.