Natural Home Magazine: America's Best Eco-Communities

by Collin Dunn, Seattle on 01. 4.07 (From Tree Hugger)

Natural Home magazine has put together a list of "America's Best Eco-Neighborhoods". The top ten list of the country’s top urban neighborhoods encourage the healthy, eco-conscious, TreeHugger-friendly lifestyle, boasting community involvement; shopping, libraries and schools within a walkable area; public transportation; and locally owned businesses, to name a few. The West Asheville neighborhood of Asheville, North Carolina tops the list (the WestFest celebration is pictured left, with Minneapolis' Marcy-Holmes, at number eight, pictured right), followed by South Congress in Austin, Texas (see what TreeHugger's readers think about Austin here), downtown Bozeman, Montana and Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York City. The balance of the list includes neighborhoods in cities mentioned often in sustainable town talk -- like Andersonville in Chicago and Seattle's Ballard neighborhood -- and a few that are more up and coming in the sustainability world: Denver's Highland neighborhood and Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis, for example. All feature environmental and/or social programs; parks, green spaces and neighborhood gathering spaces; farmer’s markets and community gardens; and sometimes alternative-energy programs and green building practices, and, while there doesn't appear to be a math equation or much quantification to the ranking system, each community's unique attributes make it deserving in its own right. See the full list at ::Natural Home magazine via ::3r Blogging