Now that New York has had six months since Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC sustainability plan, kicked off and they have released their interim report on their progress, I thought I might take a step back to think about how we evaluate sustainability at the local level.

Here at The Oil Drum, we love good data. We love hard objective data that can not only tell a story, but highlight the importance of a particular issue in a crisp fashion. However at the local level, data is not as easy to locate or not consistent enough to make an objective positive statement. The result, as many have probably realized, is that local discussions become inherently normative, political and frankly, messy.

So, help me find some data at the local level...