Picking and Moving to Green Cities

Another ranking of green cities came out last week at GristMill and SustainLane.  Also, Reader's Digest has a list of the 50 cleanest and dirtiest cities in the U.S. (I know: Reader's Digest has a website?) These complement other lists at Sperling's Best Places and others, that tell you the best cities by schools, dating, number of hospitals, etc.

I wonder if these lists are for people to choose where to live, or for cities to compete: there's some value in both, I suppose.  Of course, Americans might be the only people to choose where to live on the basis of abstract rankings, since we move so frequently (and far).  The U.S. Census issued a report analyzing our geographical mobility, titled straightforwardly enough: “Geographical Mobility” here.  From 1999 to 2000, 43.4 million Americans moved out of a total population of 281.4 million, or 15% of the population.  20% of these movers, or 3% of the total population, moved to a different state entirely; and 20% move to a new county in the same state, which given the size of U.S. states could be near or far.  In comparison, the U.K. has very low rates of geographical mobility: in a given year, about 10% of households move house, with only 1% moving between regions (and those regions are small to start with).

Why do we move so much?  The U.S. Census issued another report addressing this titled “Why People Move”, that can be found here.  The top reasons for moving between March 1999 and March 2000 are summarized in the survey:

1. New/better house/apartment (19%)
2. “Other family” reasons (13%)
3. “Other housing” reasons (12%)
4. To own home/not rent (12%)
5. New job/job transfer (10%)
6. To establish own household (7%)
7. Changes in marital status (6%)
8. Cheaper housing (6%)
9. Better neighborhood/less crime (4%)

Of these, which are specifically green?  I would argue that reasons #1 (better house), #3 (“other housing”, and #9 (“better neighborhood”) plausibly all having something to do with greenness and quality of life.  The majority of decisions, though, seem to be clearly real-estate driven (52% total), followed by family (26%) and work (16%).  That order... it's pathetic!