Today we unveil our third annual Sustainable Cities Index and the big news is that Newcastle is Britain’s most sustainable city, knocking the previous two winners – Bristol and Brighton – into second and third places respectively.

This might come as a big surprise as unlike those other cities, Newcastle doesn’t have a reputation for being particularly ‘green’.  But Newcastle has won because it does fairly well across the whole set of indicators we use to capture a balanced picture of cities’ sustainability, with no particular area of weakness. 

The Sustainable Cities Index ranks Britain’s 20 largest cities according to their performance in three broad areas: their impact on the environment, their citizens’ quality of life, and their readiness for future challenges. Both Bristol and Brighton have great scores on our quality of life and future-proofing indicators, but perform less well on environmental impact, bringing them down overall.

For me that reinforces one of the key messages about sustainability, that it’s all about striking a balance between the economic, the environmental and the social, and avoiding trade-offs.  

It’s also interesting that our cities that do have green reputations are weaker on environmental indicators than others. That could suggest that some of their reputation is built on the quality of life they offer, so maybe people do understand being green in that broader sense.  Good news for those of us who make our living saying just that!

With all the talk over the last year about green economic recovery, we also thought it was timely to ask what that means at a city level.  People use the term to mean a lot of different things from making existing business more energy efficient, right through to challenging the capitalist economic model. 

We’ve found that there is plenty that local authorities can be doing to promote green economic recovery at different levels.  They can work with businesses to understand their reliance on the local environment and society, they can direct their own spend on to more sustainable goods and services, and they can encourage and promote the innovation that we’ll need to move into a more sustainable future. 

Our winning city – Newcastle – is located in the country’s first designated Low Carbon Economic Area.  Manchester has plans to build on its industrial heritage to lead the way to a cleaner future. And Birmingham is also thinking about its contribution to the next industrial revolution. 

Cities that find the sweet-spot of low-carbon innovation that grows the local economy, providing jobs and better quality of life will be the truly sustainable cities of tomorrow.  The race is on.

Read the full report