City Profiles / Medium Cities / Bellevue, WA

Bellevue, Washington

Air Quality

Most of Washington's fuel for electricity comes from clean, renewable hydropower, the process of which emits almost no air-quality-damaging emissions after construction of the dam. Most air-damaging emissions come from transportation and city operations, and Washington State created an online carbon-footprint-reduction pledge, Shrink Your Carbon Footprint, to further encourage emissions reductions.

Standard of Living

Bellevue, which is just 20 minutes outside of Seattle, ranked number one in 2008 on CNNMoney.com's Best Places to Live and Launch [a business]. The city is growing rapidly, but with the business downtown adjacent to residential areas and with both big corporations and small start-up companies that pay no corporate income tax. The city does have a high cost of living, but it has more than 90 parks, miles of trails, a good healthcare system, low crime and good public schools.