The Internet provides many websites that rate the \u201clivability\u201d of cities around the U.S. and the world: \u201cThe Top 100 Best Places to Live in America,\u201d \u201cAmerica\u2019s 50 Best Cities,\u201d \u201cWhere Are the Best and Worst Cities to Retire,\u201d and many others. They compare many indicators of cities\u2019 performance: the cost of living, crime rate, salaries, unemployment rate, number of physicians, air and water quality, religiousness, school graduation rates, voting participation, real estate prices, taxes, and other factors.<\/p>\n
But these raters don\u2019t assess a city\u2019s viability in the era of climate change. They don\u2019t ask if cities like Boston, Paris, Shanghai, or Rio de Janeiro will be well prepared for the most disruptive weather that is likely to occur. Or if cities like San Francisco, Copenhagen, Mexico City, or Sydney are well on their way to de-carbonizing their energy supply, or putting the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass-transit riders ahead of the needs of cars, or rapidly greening their building stock, or minimizing consumption of materials and the unnecessary creation of waste. \u201cThere\u2019s a dog\u2019s breakfast of systems to rank cities,\u201d observes Gregor Robertson, mayor of Vancouver, which set the goal of being the world\u2019s greenest city. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing rigorous about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some cities may be lucky when it comes to certain challenges of the post-carbon, climate-change era we are entering. In 2016 The New York Times <\/em>identified a set of North American cities that would be good bets for escaping the harshest effects of climate change\u2014because they are favorably positioned by topography or geography. Coastal Portland, Maine, for instance, lies high enough above sea level to avoid inundation and far enough to the north to avoid systemic drought. Detroit, Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin, all in the Great Lakes region, will have to cope with weather that is somewhat warmer and wetter, but not nearly as altered and challenging as cities further to the south, and they have access to plenty of fresh water.<\/p>\n