NYTimes: Salt Lake City profits from conservation

Rocky Anderson's Director of Communications tipped us off to this article in the New York Times from November 7:

Residents of [Salt Lake City] and its suburbs, with a combined 1.2 million people, have come to view the ties between economic development and environmental conservation in a new way. They are scrubbing the air and water, building energy-efficient homes and offices closer together, constructing regional rapid transit systems, limiting new highway construction and conserving open spaces and natural resources.

Authorities on urban policy say that Salt Lake and other cities in the West, big Eastern ones like Boston and New York and smaller ones, too, like Grand Rapids, Mich., and Charleston, S.C., have become incubators of environmental ideas and programs, with tangible results. Jobs and income are increasing. Central city populations are stabilizing or growing. Businesses are cropping up.

"Environmental policy has emerged as a central organizing principle of economic growth at the metropolitan level in America," said Robert Puentes, a researcher in Washington at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "It's a very new development, and it's logical. Being more energy efficient and more environmentally sensitive lowers costs and makes metropolitan regions better places."