Is Mesa headed toward a “greener” future?
Not as much as two years ago, according to SustainLane.com, “the web’s largest people-powered guide to sustainable living,” which released its sustainability rankings among the 50 largest cities in the country.
Mesa finished at the bottom of the heap, at an overall ranking of 50 out of 50 cities. That was three spots lower than the last ranking in 2006.
According to its Web site, SustainLane considered energy crisis preparedness, natural disaster risk, as well as air and water quality, walkability and park spaces.
Portland, Ore. led the list, notching points for its use of clean technology and green building development.
San Francisco and Seattle rounded out the top three cities.
Among Arizona cities, Tucson ranked 22 (down 2 spots from 2006) and Phoenix stood at 32 (down 10 spots).
Mesa ranked 46th for ‘air quality,’ 23th for ‘city commuting,’ 46th for ‘green building,’ and 25th for public transit ridership.
That last category could be a thing to watch out for in the next ranking, as Metro Light Rail joins the public transit bandwagon in the Valley this December.
Update: On Tuesday, Mesa spokesman Steve Wright contacted the Tribune to comment about the study rankings.
Wright said no one from the city was contacted to get information on each of the factors assessed and no one was familiar with the study until it was released this week.
“The city is committed to sustainability,” Wright said. “We have an aggressive recycle program, we’re working with Metro to see if we can extend light rail to come into Mesa, the city has a commitment to enhance sustainability efforts.”
It’s time Mesa got RID of its conservative-thinking city leaders and became more progressive. The old conservative planning has OBVIOUSLY not worked. Note in the article that the three cities “on top” are LIBERAL cities.
It is no coincidence that cities with high sustainability rankings are liberal, democratically run. Conservatives and Republicans are distroying our country at an alarming rate. The longer I live in Arizona, the quicker I can’t wait to move away.
Sharon, Mesa has 4 new council members and a new mayor. The voters have spoken as to who they want to lead them. So far they are doing an excellent job for having only been in office just a FEW SHORT MONTHS. They are having to deal with many of the problems created by the last group under the misdirection of Keno Hawker, the former mayor, and Claudia Walters, the former vice-mayor. Lighten up and give them a chance. It will take time to undo much of the damage that has been done over the last eight years.
I couldn’t care less about the politics - I find it funny that Mesa results could change as it joins the Light Rail debacle. I’m quite sure that a puny rail system that only goes three miles into a city that’s over 15 miles wide is capable of providing the ultimate alternative in transportation. (*cough*)
Geez…I like Mesa, and, when I’m here, I live in the center of town. Yeah, the air is a bit dusty but this is a desert for cryin’ out loud. I’ve lived in Arizona since ‘72 and today’s air is free of the defoliant (agent orange) that cotton farmers used to spray from their crop dusters. But, I guess if you like lots of rain and cold, dreary weather then Seattle, Portland, and Frisco look pretty good. The biggest problem is too many dang people, so, if you want to leave, please do so, post haste!
Lived in Wa. for number of years now in Mesa. Rather be where weather is decent and not as exspensive to live then dreary Wa and Oregon.
I agree, Mesa needs to do some serious work in turning its poclicies around. This is not an honorable list to be on.
Renewable energy is the future, the wars in the future(as well as this one) will be fought over oil. We’ve been using this same technology since the late 1800’s.New inovations in clean energy will mean new high paying jobs . Americans are the best in creativity, so, lets leave all this Liberal/Conservative crap behind and open up our eyes and move fowaRd as one people “UNITED”.
Title lies, Mesa is in the middle of the pack (last implies 45th to 50th).
Interesting that we score in the middle of the pack and YET we have no prop tax. See folks, it is possible to be successful without a prop tax. If you want all this green stuff either pay for it yourself or move to a city which has it.
walkability and park spaces is what Mesa is NOT about. The reason is, we are a bedroom community with the focus on the back yard. The porch is not important, it’s the garage. Parks here has become stagnant. The parks department builds parks in a vacuum, and lacks any innovation possible. Walkability can be set on the focus of the community to be a bedroom community with retail sales and the automobile. Outside of that, our brilliant traffic engineers made our streets dangerous places for high speed movement. The sidewalks are not pushed off, the streets are too big, and crossings are far in-between. There are also no ascetics to our streets. Our freeways have more ascetics than our local streets. Weird, huh?
I agree with Hey You! We have 4 new council members, and so far, they have done more for this city than the past few decades of leadership. The whole conservative and liberal talk is trash. These liberal cities have there own problems outside of sustainability, more so than Conservative cities. Mesa developed as a post world war city, when things were cheap, the car ruled, and still does. You have people who continue to plan on the same scale as they did 20+ years ago. And that really is not the planners, its more the transportation engineers in Mesa. They LOVE their wide streets and do not want to go outside the box. When we have talked about medians, they for some reason will not go outside of the standard they have created. There is an easy standard that developers have created and make money off of. The people and the state/local gov need to take hold of our cities, not the developers and decide what kind of city they want.
To the council. Councilmen Richins, he’s got a degree in Sustainable communities. Dennis K understands green communities and is a supporter of it. I have spoke to the Mayor a lot about sustainability and how Mesa is building, refocusing back on to the older parts of town etc, and he gets it and is a supporter of it. Mayor Smith is a total 180 degree change from Hawker. The guy owns an asphalt company, what do you expect from that clown? Yeah, Smith is a developer, but he gets and accepts most of these progressive methods when it comes to cities.
To Bette: And WE can’t wait for you to go!! Bye, Bye
I live in Mesa and like many things about it, but NO place is perfect. I do wish that we had more parks, but it appears that the CITIZENS of Mesa do not care about that type of thing or we wouldn’t be losing a cute little park, a ball field & golf course for some huge, corporate “waterpark”. We don’t have the “walkability” that Scottsdale does but we are 3 times the size and its easy to be a pretty little town when you ARE a LITTLE town.
What ever happened to the idea that if you don’t like the way things are… either go away OR DO SOMETHING TO HELP IMPROVE THINGS. Seems like all anybody wants to do anymore is sit on their A$$ and bitch about things - no one gets up and does anything. So, personally, I don’t want to hear all your whining - Cowboy/Cowgirl UP! (in case you don’t get that, it means GROW UP & get real) - Geez what color is the sky in your world anyway????
Well, I’m in LA County, and I’m dying to get back to Mesa. Politics? That’s passe. Watch for conservative city leaders to get on the Green bandwagan lickity-split.
I’m not exaggerating one iota when I say I’d move to Death Valley to get the heck outa here. And my office is smack - dab in the middle of downtown LA (yuk to the max).
Gimmie anywhere West: Mesa, Las Cruces, Deming, El Chuco, Alba-kirk, Tucson, Kingman–just GET ME THE HECK OUTA HERE.