Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is ambitious, powerful, competitive, and, lucky for Chicagoans, green. He wants Chicago to be known as the greenest city in America, and seems unstoppable when it comes to planting trees (half a million since 1989) to beautify the city and provide much needed oxygen and shade; and he’s on a roll with greening city rooftops (two and a half million square feet) to conserve energy, filter rainwater and bring summertime temps down.
Peter Nicholson, Executive Director of Foresight Design Initiative in Chicago says the mayor is the city’s biggest cheerleader for all things green. “He leads by example,” Peter says, “and he’s able to motivate and inspire people to evolve better by taking intentional action – and he rides a bike.”
Chicago provides its citizens with plenty of bike paths, walkways and recreation areas to enjoy nature. Mayor Daley’s Environmental Action Agenda replaced 130 city vehicles with hybrids and installed 10,000 bike racks around the city as cycling has become one of the most common methods of transportation, along with Chicago’s well-traveled transit system.
Chicago is a diverse city, and according to Mr. Nicholson, it’s the diversity of the efforts that are underway that sets Chicago apart as a green model. “There is no part of the city that has been left untouched by the greening efforts,” he says. “The mayor even has a bird agenda.” That’s totally groovin’ with the woowoo.
I’m all for politicians making leverage out of the right things. Chicago has a interesting green history with it’s parks, and the forest preserve system in Cook County is a wonderful model of doing it right. Then there’s the Lake, that amazing balance to everything humans try to construct along its shores, wonderfully dwarfing each effort by is simple profound vastness. Go for it mayor, the Lake is watching.
nicely put, richard. i do believe the lake is watching – and communicating on so many other levels.
i’ve never been to chicago, but the mayor is apparently well-loved for his green efforts. i spoke with the mayor of toronto, who’s in friendly competition with chicago for greenest city. toronto’s next in the series…
in toronto, we too have a great lake to mirror our human activity. it’s been off balance for the last couple of decades, but i’m hopeful we can right the wrongs and bring health and vitality back to our city’s nature. the health of our cities is directly reflected in their lakes. toronto’s health depends on chicago’s; and mine depends on yours.
love reading your comments and your thought-provoking blog. always insightful, always deep, always meaningful. thank you.