A city once wreathed in smoke and deafened by shipyard steel-hammers, has transformed itself into the greenest in Britain, according to the country’s most comprehensive sustainability audit.

Millions of pounds and a communal push for cleaner, brighter surroundings have returned Newcastle upon Tyne – almost – to the days when Thomas Bewick made his countryside engravings in the city centre and commuted home through meadows.

“We hope this inspires other cities to redouble their efforts,” said Peter Madden of Forum for the Future, whose annual rankings show the Geordies leap-frogging more “apparently green” cities such as Bristol, which came top last year, and the 2007 winner Brighton & Hove. For the second year running, Hull propped up the bottom of the table.

“Anywhere with an industrial heritage faces genuine challenges, but Newcastle’s success shows how it is possible to overcome the legacy of the past. In all our categories – environment, quality of life and future-proofing, the city scores really well,” said Madden.

Tyneside’s triumph drew on improvements in air quality, biodiversity in public parks and open spaces and the best salmon run on a English river. The audit shows the city performing well on waste collection, extending green space, life expectancy and the local strategy for tackling climate change.

Its ratings took it from fourth place last year after a similar climb from eighth in 2007. The accolade follows plaudits for the local universities and hospitals, and a year as unofficial European City of Culture; pipped by Liverpool for the actual title, Newcastle and its neighbour Gateshead went ahead with a marathon arts programme as if they had won.

The council’s Liberal Democrat leader John Shipley picked out transport innovation as one of the city’s distinctive green projects, with curbs on cars and emission cuts on public transport. The Tyneside Metro is also one of the biggest underground services outside London.

“We reckon to be leading the way in transport which reduces CO2 emissions and helps to prepare us for a low carbon economy,” he said. “Economic growth must not be achieved at the expense of the environment. Sustainability is at the heart of our vision for a socially just future.

“The city has also become the electric car capital in a government-backed experiment, which will see 1,000 charging points installed in Newcastle and Gateshead over the next two years.”

The silver and bronze in the Forum for the Future audit went to Bristol and Brighton & Hove, with organisers saying that the final figures were “very close”. Bristol came first in the quality of life and Brighton had the strongest economy, but slipped back on environmental performance.

Fourth place went to a newcomer in the top five, Leicester, which scored best in future-proofing thanks to climate change measures, recycling progress and a very high number of allotments. London was fifth while another northern contender, Leeds, shot up from 13th to sixth place.

Hull’s lowly place at the bottom of the league for the second year running followed a collapse of conservation management on the 97 local biodiversity sites, and a slip down the economic table because of job losses. But the Yorkshire port scored its best-ever rating on future-proofing. Glasgow fell back badly in the same category, with a fall in recycling to only 14.5%of waste.

Madden said that the jostle for top positions showed how almost all the country’s major cities were raising their green game, with performances so good in many sectors that a slight lapse could forfeit half-a-dozen points. A third northern city with a major legacy of heavy industry, Bradford, drops to 16th place this year, after winning the environment section in 2007, largely because of a fall in local recycling.

The report is a “detailed snapshot” rather than a comprehensive analysis according to the forum, which uses 13 indicators to reach the results. Cities are chosen rather than more mixed areas, largely because of the greater power of their local authorities to affect “green” statistics.

Newcastle’s victory was the greater because of the city’s continuing prosperity, Madden said, with the data placing it ninth in economic performance. He said: “Our findings vindicate the council’s sustainable community strategy for 2008-2011, which commits Newcastle to ‘economic growth but not at the expense of the environment’.”

The city’s victory may come as more of a surprise outside the region than on Tyneside itself, where the quality of life – and landscape – has been a given for years. Newcastle has some of Britain’s finest Georgian architecture and the Town Moor, within easy walking distance of the centre, is an “urban lung” bigger than Hampstead Heath and Hyde Park combined.

Bewick, whose work is in the highest canon of portrayals of the English countryside, had no doubts himself. After a spell in the capital in 1776 he wrote with relief on returning home: “The numerous shows to be seen in London may give a momentary satisfaction, but cannot afford me half the pleasure which I always feel in my excursions through the pleasant woods to Eltringham.”

2009 rankings

(2008 ranking in brackets)1 (4) Newcastle

2 (1) Bristol

3 (2) Brighton and Hove

4 (8) Leicester

5 (9) London

6 (13) Leeds

7 (6) Edinburgh

8 (10=) Nottingham

9 (7) Sheffield

10 (5) Cardiff

11 (14) Coventry

12 (3) Plymouth

13 (12) Sunderland

14 (15) Manchester

15 (17) Liverpool

16 (10=) Bradford

17 (19) Birmingham

18 (16) Wolverhampton

19 (18) Glasgow

20 (20) Hull