Chicago's City Hall roof. Image via National Geographic.
As a result of my friend’s emphatic insistence that I visit her, I made that promise two months prior and kept it. With less than $100 dollars in my pocket, I boarded that Megabus from Minneapolis to Milwaukee then to Chicago. And I will never regret those 9 days I spent in that city. Chicago is the American city I fell in awe with when I visited last summer, in 2010. It is a city that has so much to offer, and if you’ve never visited the place, I strongly suggest you should. There’s a healthy possibility that you will enjoy it so much.
Chicago just feels alive.
And I truly miss Chicago. When my friend was at work during the day, I headed out to the post office, to the round the way cafe’s, on the bus to the other end of the city, over bridges, by public schools, through neighborhood blocks that reminded me of the Huxtable residence…and I adored this place. I wanted it to embrace me, and it did.
It is a city where I felt so many things: excitement, peace, scared, amazed, curious. Being from Minneapolis, it made me think of New York City (a city I briefly passed through via a family road trip to the airport). Chicago seemed like a mirage: how could a Midwest city, so close to my small city, just an 8-hour drive, be so different and so complex?
One example is the confidence Chicago embraces to lead by doing, in the arena of sustainable city building. As a student of architecture or urban planning or environmental science, you learn that our buildings are the largest energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters.
Each region has a uniqueness about it. Instead of a mass-production approach to our cities, we can look to Chicago to inspire us to improve upon what our specific regions possess that make us one-of-a-kind. What will make your city stand out sustainably?
Instead of accepting this dismal report with no efforts to revamp the building process, previous mayor Richard M. Daley helped continue the green movement by implementing a green roof right on top of the city hall building. This was just a symbol of many new measures to come: 10,000 bike racks in the city, enhancing Millennium Park, and sustainable housing, just to point out a few.
Should more cities be like Chicago? Yes and no. Yes, because cities should strive to be sustainable for years and years to come. Yes, because cities should embrace purposeful urban design + individuality to encourage others to follow suit. And no, because Chicago should not be seen as the end-all, be-all. Instead, cities should receive from Chicago the impetus to work creatively to solve problems in the areas of job creation through improved physical and educational infrastructure, and devise economic solutions that work better than the previous ones.
The Public Broadcasting Service has a great series titled, e2, which takes an in-depth look at the movers and shakers of urbanization and all facets that feed into its positive impact: transportation, architecture, water, energy and the ecological framework that ties it all together. “Green Machine” focuses on how the city of Chicago is once again leading by example. Chicago reminds us to stand tall in our sustainable approach to revising our cities. This is where the City Beautiful movement started, and where today, the architectural roots are steadfast and new innovation in this discipline is expanding. It is a beautiful city.
