Cities Worldwide Improving Air Quality with Data, Bike Lanes, Cleaner Vehicles, Less Coal

A new report from Breathe Cities shows that cities around the world are making progress in cleaning up their air. The cities getting the most particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide out of their air and their residents’ lungs since 2010 are in Europe and Asia:

The report finds that these more breathable cities have some policy approaches in common:

1. Collect lots of air quality data to support policy actions.
2. Make the data public to build trust and support accountability.
3. Promote “active travel”—i.e., walking, bicycling—with more people paths and roadway and parking for cars.
4. Expand public transit and switch buses from diesel to electricity.
5. Install more electric vehicle charging stations.
6. Restrict older, dirtier vehicles, especially freight haulers and construction machinery.
7. Discourage use of coal and wood for cooking and heating.

Reducing urban air pollution is a serious pro-life policy… and it may help keep you from going senile like Trump:

There are no safe levels of PM2.5, but doctors estimate millions of lives could be saved each year by following their guidelines.

Breathing polluted air affects our health through every stage of our lives, said Fuller, from low birth weight babies and asthma in children to cancer and heart problems in adult life.

“In the last 10 years, we have learned that air pollution is linked to cognitive decline and dementia in old age,” he added. “All of these illnesses exert a massive toll on families, hamper our economies – as people are off work ill or looking after others – and exert a direct cost on our health services. All of these illnesses are preventable” [Ajit Niranjan, “London, San Francisco, and Beijing Achieve ‘Remarkable Reductions’ in Air Pollution,” The Guardian, 2026.03.12].

South Dakota’s 2026 Legislature took no action to improve air quality (see 2026 bills on environmental protection, environmental cleanup, mining). But the state is subsidizing Smithfield Foods’ transfer of its air pollution from the middle of Sioux Falls to the rural environs of Crooks.

Updater 18:10 CDT: Ignoring the benefits of cleaner air and acting mostly out of spite, this White House has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress voted under a sane President to spend on walking and biking trails:

Since the early 1990s, there has been fairly consistent — and largely bipartisan — federal support for bicycle and pedestrian projects. Federal funding for such projects reached new heights during the Biden administration, as major spending measures in 2021 and 2022 included billions in new money for them.

But in his efforts to eliminate what he perceives as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — and to roll back anything associated with his predecessor — President Donald Trump has targeted hundreds of millions in federal grants for biking and pedestrian projects. And further cuts could be coming.

The broad tax and spending measure Trump signed last summer rescinded $2.4 billion from the Biden administration’s Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, money included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to address long-standing safety issues stemming from past infrastructure projects, including interstate highways that split minority communities.

Of that total, at least $750 million was specifically earmarked for trails, walking paths and bike lane projects, according to data on grant recipients collected by Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for trails and the construction of multiuse paths in abandoned railroad corridors [Shalina Chatlani, “Bike and Walking Trails Lose Hundreds of Millions Under Trump,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.03.12].