Paul McRandle is the editor of NRDC’s SmarterCities.org project. The site examines what cities across the U.S. are doing to green their profile, and in the process increase the quality of life for residents. The entire Smarter Cities program will take about three years to complete, but in the meantime the site is updated with relevant stories, city profiles and all sorts of tools to examine metro areas across the nation. “It seemed like cities were where the action was,” McRandle says of the idea for the inception of this project. “Cities were where environmental change was happening in the U.S. We wanted to show what cities are doing [to be greener] and what their residents should get behind and encourage and learn from.” Informing the public of these eco-initiatives takes an effort from both the NRDC and the cities themselves. McRandle’s team sent surveys to every city in the country with a population of 50,000 or more — 655 cities in total — and data is constantly being compiled and updated to reflect the newest green trends.