Created with the New York City Office of Environmental Coordination (OEC), Sustainable New York City affirms the city's commitment to environmental sustainability and makes the case for integrating sustainable practices into everyday municipal operations. The report shows how New York and cities across the nation are creating innovative strategies for water conservation, energy efficiency, and waste management.

With the High Performance Building Guidelines, the High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines, and the High Performance Landscape Guidelines, the Design Trust has created a catalogue of highly efficient, non-polluting construction techniques and materials that can be used by New York City agencies and the private sector. Using a case-study approach, Sustainable New York City shows how those techniques and materials have been, and can continue to be, integrated in everyday planning and operations in New York and elsewhere.

Case studies describe high-performance building programs in New York and Chicago, natural stormwater management systems in Staten Island and Seattle, environmentally preferable purchasing in Santa Monica, and a large-scale paper-reduction effort in New York. In addition, an extensive bibliography provides a valuable survey of current thinking on municipal sustainability.