28. Los Angeles, CA

Ahhh… the glitz, the glamour, the sun, the surf. Los Angeles has come to represent the California dream that draws people from every corner of the country. But along with screen starlets, suburbia reigns supreme in the City of Angels. And that’s bad news for sustainability, contributing to auto-dependence, heavy freeway congestion, and ranking it second only to Fresno for the worst air quality in the nation. To combat this, city officials are promoting public transit, but a deeply engrained (and smoggy) car culture is making this difficult. One thing that may help get drivers out of their cars and into the great outdoors is the Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan, a multi-billion dollar project to transform 32 miles of the river shoreline into a continuous, carbon-sequestering greenway, uniting communities along the way. City Councilmember Ed Reyes, who’s overseeing the project, has also been hard at work planning the Arroyo Seco neighborhood development—potentially the first LEED-certified neighborhood in the nation. L.A. plans to up its solid waste diversion to 70 percent by 2015 and is also in the process of creating an environmentally preferable purchasing program for city operations.

(Photo by Aaron Logan)