Los Angeles, California

The City of Los Angeles has become a leader in the green cities movement through progressive legislation and innovative policy makers. Green policy is supported through a variety of initiatives, including state-owned alternate fuel vehicles, landfill diversions, and large-scale tree planting projects. Such actions have permitted Los Angeles to set high goals and achieve great successes in the environmental protection and renewal movement. Other major U.S. cities have copied many of Los Angeles's projects in an attempt to improve the quality of life not just for individual municipalities, but for the nation and planet as a whole.

Los Angeles's major green efforts stem from a plan set forth in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Green LA Program. The Green LA Program seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 to 35 percent below the levels recorded in 1990. The program goes further than the Kyoto Protocol and rests on the plan to increase use of renewable energy by 35 percent by 2020. The Green LA Program has undertaken major projects such as the “greening” of urban alleys, increasing urban energy efficiency, allowing utility rebates for solar power, and the reforestation of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, among other things.

Los Angeles possesses over 900 miles of alleyway, with much of this space underutilized and unsafe. Alleyways have historically resulted in a variety of dangerous and uneconomic activities, including criminal acts, the dumping of garbage, and underutilized space. In an effort to solve these problems, Los Angeles has sought to use these public spaces to benefit the public. Los Angeles has reclaimed its alleys, using some as pedestrian markets as well as public gardens. These actions have assisted with the beautification of the city, as well as reduced carbon dioxide in the city's atmosphere. This general reclaiming of alleys for public space has caught on and spread to other cities such as Seattle. A more central component of the movement that has been taken up in cities such as Chicago is the lining of alleyways with porous materials that will absorb polluted water and allow the clean water, after being filtered through the groundfill, to refill underwater basins. Urban runoff is the [Page 310]primary pollutant to the oceans, and as the alley water reclamation process reduces runoff into lakes and oceans, it has been very successful. In Los Angeles, the tourism dollars that the ocean brings are protected and augmented by such measures. The removal of trash bins and dumpsters from alleys has allowed Los Angeles's citizens a greater sense of stewardship of their city, as well as providing an economically viable way to continue the green movement that has swept the city.

Urban efficiency extends to areas outside a municipality's direct control. Los Angeles has been very successful in encouraging the building of and conversion to of Energy Star buildings. Energy Star status is accorded to buildings that use at least 35 percent less energy than normal buildings and emit 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Los Angeles has the most Energy Star buildings in the United States—at this time, over 260 Los Angeles buildings have earned the agency's Energy Star designation. Some buildings have achieved the Energy Star standard through an upgrade to more energy-efficient lighting or by installation of more efficient motors for elevators, fans, or other mechanical systems. Such a conversion can have significant economic benefits for a building's owners. For example, one area building that was renovated to Energy Star standards enjoyed a 2.4 percent reduction in energy use, which resulted in annual savings of $90,000 in energy bills.

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