Las Vegas fell 20 places to #47 in a sustainability index published by the website SustainLane.com. The ranking measures a number of categories such as street congestion, air and water quality, and green building (LEED certification). According to the index, Las Vegas ranks high in energy and climate change policy, green building and low natural disaster risk. Our issues with our tight water supply, metro street congestion, and air quality overwhelmed the positives and pushed us towards the bottom of the list.

The top five cities included Portland, San Francisco,  Seattle, Chicago, and New York City. Among other desert cities, we ranked ahead only of Mesa, AZ (#50), with Albuquerque leading the list at #18.

Fewer cars are being stolen in the Las Vegas area. In fact, thefts are down 32 percent from the same time last year. If the numbers hold, Metro police will have cut the number of auto thefts in Las Vegas by more than half since 2006.

The area with the largest drop was the Las Vegas Strip which saw a 40 percent decrease. Police say that people are being more aware.

Click here to read the complete story.

Most of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s numbers were still heading in the wrong direction in July. The only positive number in this month’s report was a small increase in convention goers (up 0.6 percent) and total number of conventions held (up 8.9 percent). Sadly the economic impact from these increases was actually 3.7 percent lower than July of last year.

Gaming revenue was especially hard hit, falling 15 percent for Clark County as a whole.

The average daily room rate in Las Vegas fell 10 percent to $105.97. The year to date average fell 6.6 percent to $126.51.

(All figures are year over year comparisons)

A new survey says that Las Vegas is among the top 40 best cities in which to live. Best Life Magazine ranks Las Vegas as the number 32, behind number 31 — Reno. Researchers used a variety of criteria for the study of 257 cities, including information from the FBI and the U.S. Census Bureau. Honolulu ranks as the top city to live in. Clarksville, Tennessee ranks at the bottom of the list.

When it comes to walking in Nevada, Reno ranks right at the top for Best Walking City and North Las Vegas ranks at the bottom.

The rankings were done by Prevention magazine and the American Podiatric Medical Association.

The cities ranked in the following order — Reno, Paradise, Sparks, Las Vegas, Spring Valley, Carson, Sunrise Manor, Henderson, Enterprise and North Las Vegas.

By the way, the best city for walking in the United States is Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tell us where you like to walk.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District is reporting today that over the past two weeks, its customers used 574 million gallons less water compared to the same two week period last year. We have the recent rain to thank for the drop in consumption (and all of you who turned off your irrigation systems during the rains). Even with the rain, July’s total was below number, as measured by the National Weather Service. For the month, we officially received .29 inches of rain, .15 below the norm of .44 inches