What New York City Could Learn from Toronto About Sustainability

WHAT NEW YORK CITYCOULD LEARN FROMTORONTO ABOUTSUSTAINABILITY

BENNAT BERGER

While cities have been coined green andsmart, what really makes a city sustainable?

Recent surveys generally give scores in threecategories: people, planet, and profit,

according to Arcadis’s Sustainable CitiesIndex, assembled by the London-based

Center for Economics and Business Research.

The Sustainable Cities Indexoperates on a scale from100. New York is ranked

overall 26th out of 100 citiessurveyed, and Toronto

comes in at 33rd. However,the cities’ scores are not faroff from each other: NewYork scored 62.9% overall,

and Toronto 61.7%.

Specifically, what can the relatively high-

scoring New York City learn from thesimilarly successful Toronto?

The cities’ sub-scores reveal a more detailedmakeup: in the people category, Torontoactually beat New York, with a sub-score of62.3% compared to New York’s 53.4%,

placing them 40th and 77th out of 100 cities.

They scored similarly in the planet section:Toronto at 68.1% and New York at 66.1%,ranking 28th and 33rd in this category.

The profit category explains why NewYork outranks Toronto on the Index: NewYork scored 69.3% in this category andToronto scored 54.8%, leaving them at

8th and 38th in this section.

So if New York is to look to Toronto forways to improve its sustainability score,the planet and particularly the peoplesub-scores give some indication.

Each city’s rating in the people sub-

section is comprised of scores in severalsub-categories: education, health,demographics, income inequality,

affordability, work-life balance, and crime.

The biggest discrepancies between Torontoand New York can be found in income

inequality (10.7% > 6.5%); crime (13.2 % >

10.1%); and affordability (7.1% > 0.2%).

The planet sub-score is based onenvironmental risks, green spaces,energy, air pollution, greenhousegas emissions, waste management,drinking water and sanitation.

The most significant differences betweenToronto and New York here are environmentalrisks (9.9% > 7.6%); energy (8.6% > 6.5%); and

air pollution (13.4% > 12.1%).

Toronto has been especiallysuccessful in energy efficiency,waste management, and water.

Toronto is one of the top three cities forensuring a robust, effective, and healthywater supply, while New York’s resources

are considered more vulnerable.

Indeed, the report highlights some ofNew York’s perceived weaknesses,including poverty, an overburdened

transportation infrastructure, and risingsea levels forecasting more storms,flooding, and other natural disasters.

Toronto, on the other hand, will have todeal with a 25% population increaseexpected in the next 15 years.

“According to a report presented by thecity, Toronto has reduced greenhouse gasemissions by 25% since 1990 and expectsto improve that number to 30% by 2030even amid the city`s population growth,

which has seen the metropolitan area swellto six million as of February 2015.”

Hopefully these sustainability assessmentsand metrics encourage cities around the

globe to learn from each other and the myriadissues faced by such complex cosmopolitan

organisms in the coming century.

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