Los Angeles Ranked 18th in Vague Arbitrary List

SustainLane released their list of top sustainable cities this week. We’re not sure what this means but Los Angeles took the #18 spot.

The survey was limited to a geographically diverse set of cities with populations over 100,000 and accessible sustainability data. For reasons unknown, #5 Santa Monica, with only 90,000 residents, was granted an exception.

Overall rankings were determined by averaging 12 individual category rankings into an average and were influenced by such factors as number of farmers’ markets, the city’s biking plan and the existence of a URL for the city environmental program.

Scanning the SustainLane Web site for details on what sustainability actually means led to this definition from their About Us section:

Sustainability has been defined in so many ways. To us, it simply means living more intelligently. How best to do exactly that is why we are here, and why we want you to share your ideas and resources with us and our community.

Living more intelligently? Talking about saving the world but not doing anything about it? Farmers Markets? This sounds like the work of…Hippies!

So be proud, LA. There are 17 other cities that Hippies should rather live in than ours.