I find it fascinating that the Green movement has increasingly become a marketing strategy by cities to make these cities seem more "livable" and in the process actually making it so. Air quality improves, clogged streets become bike arteries, traffic noise drops, local produce in Farmers Markets both provide fresh alternatives to grocery stores but also spur those grocery stores to buy local for their produce as well. City planners start to think about green spaces and walkability indexes. The cities become a bigger magnet for green businesses, which also has the effect of pushing more traditional industrial businesses to either become greener or to move their facilities, in the latter case denying them the top talent that increasingly migrates to the green cities over their industrial counterparts.
Once over the initial hump of changing a community's mindset the verdantization of a community tends to initiate a virtuous cycle. It doesn't happen overnight - it may take a couple of decades - but the difference between green and industrial communities are increasingly becoming obvious, and those corporations that are reliant upon an indifferent populace in order to minimize their reclamation costs are now increasingly finding it difficult to find such places to operate, or to lure people there to stay long term.
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