The runners-up: Newark came close (#2), but couldn’t take the crown. San Bernardino, California ranked worst on two of the four metrics (most pollution, least satisfied inhabitants), but only finished #3 overall. Detroit has to be disappointed with fourth place, since they always expect to win this sort of competition. I’m guessing that Flint, Michigan and Gary, Indiana, were too small to qualify for the list.
The champ: I don’t know whether their #1 is the right choice. It never seemed exceptionally dirty to me, but the authors established certain criteria that determined the outcome, and those criteria are only peripherally relevant to cleanliness (excepting “pollution” of course, which is directly relevant).
On the other side of the coin:
- Their metric identified Virginia Beach as America’s cleanest city.
- One surprise to me was the selection of Buffalo as one of the ten cleanest, but I guess I’m thinking of Buffalo in the 1950s.





