Copenhagen, Denmark

Green grid: With its affable citizens, low-rise central skyline broken only by church spires, and consistent placement atop most-livable-cities lists, Copenhagen makes being good look damn sexy. The city also makes being green look easy. The Danish started designing and manufacturing high-tech wind turbines in the 1970s and '80s, kick-starting modern advances in wind power generation and giving the country a clean-energy jump on the rest of the world. Nowadays, Denmark harnesses a quarter of its energy from wind. Copenhagen itself, which plans to go carbon-neutral by 2025, gets the bulk of its alternative energy from the Middelgrunden windmill farm two miles offshore—a row of 20 turbines that look almost whimsical from the harbor.

Living city: Copenhagen's endless midsummer days allow visitors plenty of time to join the bike-happy locals on a ride around the city (almost half the capital's residents cycle to work). Hop off at Strøget, a car-free pedestrian quarter in the city center, before steering your two-wheeler toward Noma, where chef René Redzepi celebrates the bounty of the Nordic harvest, elevating simple ingredients like sea buckthorn and rye kernels to heavenly heights in a repurposed warehouse on the harbor.

Sustainable stay: At the 366-room Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers, which utilizes solar panels on its facade, plus groundwater, to moderate the temperature, you'll sleep easy knowing that yours is one of the world's few truly carbon-neutral hotels.

Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers
114–118 Ørestads Boulevard
Tel: 45 88 77 66 55

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