A clue to your question might be found in another ranking, found elsewhere on the site: SustainLane US City Rankings. San Francisco, Portland, Berkeley and Seattle top the 'sustainability' list. Make of that what you will.

But I didn't want my first post on OD to be a political one. As a resident of the city which is #45 on the list, Columbus Ohio (or really Dublin, a burb thereof), I wanted to throw a few words in. Sure, if there is a place where minivans, SUVs and Hummers go to die, central Ohio must be it. We have the most minimal of public transport, and sprawl is a polite way to describe our suburban 'planning'. A gasoline shortage would certainly cause problems here.

But to discount the value of other factors, like plentiful coal and nuke generated electric power (the area is served by AEP, 81% non-petro generation), and the assumption that big collective farm markets are somehow more valuable than small local farm and rural markets (of which we have dozens in the area), while other shortcomings are given a free pass (If Boston has no fuel oil for heating, they're ok?)... it all seems like more of a call to reurbanization than an honest evaluation of who suffers in an oil crisis. And what does public wireless networking have to do with telecommuting? Columbus is wired to the gills, and everyone I know has high-speed internet sufficient for working from home. (But then I'm in IT).

Maybe the item which irks me most is the "dearth of local produce" one. We don't have the long growing season that the Sun Belt locations do, so we'd be short of green veggies and tomatoes for 4 months of the year. Tough. Going on our local strengths, we'd still have grain, meat, cheese and beer, which would not only get us through the winter but make for one heck of a oil-shortage tailgate party.