Top Cities for Green Technology

Here's a new ranking of cities on green technology innovation from SustainLane Government.  They say it's based on data on "clusters" of  venture capital, academic or federal research lab collaboration, and state or local government policy.  I tend to be skeptical of these sorts of rankings which seem to lack systematic and broadly comparable data sources. Even so, they can still stimulate some insights.  In that spirit, I've added how these cities rank on our Creativity Index (CI), out of 331 metros nationwide.

Top 5: Austin, Texas (CI:  1), San Jose, CA (CI: 3 ), Berkeley, CA (CI:  6), Pasadena, CA (CI: NA ), and Boston (CI:  8)

Runners Up:  San Francisco (CI: 2) , New York ( CI: 29) , Seattle (CI: 5) , San Diego (CI: 19)   and Houston (CI: 50) .

The full report is here.  The overlap in the two is pretty interesting - don't you think.

Any thoughts out there on what might be going on here?

Comments

[DJM]

Houston is probably the most interesting given the general attitude that many americans have towards the energy and energy services industry... nice to see that the industry and its eco-system are branching into the future.

[Richard]

Nicely said, David. Houston scored in the top 10 on the initial creativity index, before better measures of racial-ethnic segregation were added. It still does quite well among large metros (over 1 million population). It also has a massive concentration of high-tech, especially in the software industry related to the energy and resource sector. The SustainGovernment report has some detail on clean technology innovation going on there.

[Wendy]

Intruiging to see the correlation between Green cities and creative cities.

Here are my thoughts on what could be going on.

1. Studies have suggested that green office buildings increase worker productivity by 16%. Better air quality and better light make for happier, more productive people. I think that natural light and fresh air is also good for the creative mind. However, there are not that many green buildings yet, so I think they are the result of being in a highly creative city in which companies want their workers comfortable and productive (and to retain their staff).

2. Improving "green technology" requires creativity and thinking out of the box -- and advances have come rapidly. It makes sense that it will emerge in a region that contains strong clusters of engineering firms, architecture companies, and other knowledge economy industries filled with creative people.

3. If you're a green technology company, it's probably easier to attract the best and brightest interesting in green technology if you're in a city where there are many outdoor pursuits available: Good walking and biking trails in the city and quick escapes available to rivers, hills, mountains, ocean, lakes, etc. Many of the cities on the list contain these benefits (although I'm uncertain about Houston).

My $0.02.

[Richard]

Wendy - Very nicely put. I could not agree more. My earlier work on green industries and sustainability helped lead me to the creativity thesis. I only wish we had a bigger and more robust data set on green industries and regions.