Chicago Faces the Future

There are several key ingredients an urban center needs to sustain prosperity, according to professor David F. Schulz of Northwestern University. Many city planners focus on the ingredients for economic development (such as infrastructure and new businesses). But Schulz believes such a focus misses the founding ingredient that makes all other development possible: human talent.

When Mayor Richard M. Daley took office in 1989, his primary goal was to remake Chicago into a city which would attract that human talent. He set out to redesign the ambiance of the city from a gloomy and economically depressed urban center to one of gardens, lights, and excitement. The result has been a more-than-decade-long experiment in what some observers have called the "architecture of reassurance."

First it was flower gardens planted in the median strips of major downtown streets. New wrought-iron streetlights were built, and from these iron baskets were hung overflowing with even more flowers. Major landscaping occurred along Michigan Lake, the Chicago riverbanks downtown and in the surrounding neighborhoods, and on the vast campus of Chicago's Field Museum. And since 1989, almost 300,000 new trees have been planted throughout the city.

All together, $5.2 billion has been spent improving Chicago's walkways, streets, parks, and communities.

Even in my working-class neighborhood, where there has been little around the transit stations besides concrete and blacktop for years, the city has been landscaping and planting trees. The effect has been remarkable. It's a change from waste and neglect to revitalization, pride and hope.

On the side of the Harold Washington Memorial Library (built downtown in 1995 in honor of the incredibly popular mayor who served just prior to Daley, and who died in office), one sees the words "Urbs in Horto" chiseled beneath the gazing figure of Athena. It is Latin for "City in a Garden," and it is the new motto of Chicago. By making the city a modern Garden of Eden, Daley hopes to see Chicago become more attractive and livable. A livable cityt will not only attract talent, but those businesses that hire and serve that talent, and the money to revitalize an eroding inner-city infrastructure.

So far, that talent has been responding the way City Hall has hoped. Since Daley's beautification plan has gone into effect, 120,000 people have moved downtown into lofts renovated by private developers. Businesses have followed, with the city's biggest trophy arriving last year: from Seattle, Boeing moved its corporate headquarters into downtown Chicago last summer. In addition, suburbanites coming into the city for shopping have doubled.

"Everybody comes back raving about it [Chicago]," said Paul Levy, executive director of Central Philadelphia Development District, in a 1999 interview with Russ Salzman of the Houston Chronicle. "Chicago is probably doing a better job than most cities in landscaping--the trees and the planters and the flowers. Frankly, there is a level of envy to what Chicago has done."

There is more to the gardens besides beautification and attracting new life. One of the more inventive programs Daley is pushing these days are rooftop gardens. In the spring of 2001, City Hall finished constructing a rooftop garden as part of a four-city federal project to test how such gardens affect urban temperatures and humidity. To coincide with its grand opening, City Hall published a booklet titled Chicago's Green Rooftops--A Guide to Rooftop Gardening, and soon began announcing the positive effect a rooftop garden has had for City Hall.

Through ongoing studies during the 2001 summer, City Hall rooftop temperatures were consistently 12 degrees less than those buildings with blacktop roofs. Surface temperatures in planted areas were as low as 86 degrees, where for a blacktop it was 168 degrees. But there is more to a rooftop garden than just bringing down the local temperature.

"Our studies estimate that City Hall will save $4,000-$5,000 per year in heating and cooling costs due to the cooling and insulating effects of the rooftop garden," says Environment Commissioner William Abolt.

Daley is hoping that such revelations will entice city building managers to construct their own gardens. Chicago has been suffering not only under intense heat during the summer months from all the concrete and blacktops, but also from the increased use of air-conditioners and the attendant energy consumption. In addition to conserving energy, Daley is also pushing city buildings to create their own by installing solar panels. More gardens and more alternative fuel sources, says Daley, mean cleaner air for Chicago.

Daley is pushing conservation even further to clean Chicago's air and sustain an admirable quality of life. Daley's energy plan is also providing grants to low-income residents to replace old furnaces (particularly coal and oil fired ones), building more co-generation plants which use the wasted heat of industries to provide additional power to residences, and buying electric transportation for city workers. ComEd, Chicago's energy supplier, has also agreed to make 20% of the energy they sell to Chicago green by 2005.

Chicago's proactive effort for sustainability through landscaping and conservation has many admirers across the country. There are of course some critics who worry that if the economy goes sour such efforts will appear superfluous, but Chicago has always had a diverse economy which minimizes such downturns.

In the meantime, Daley's architecture of reassurance has had a positive affect on the city's self-esteem. People are proud of how the city looks, and they are more willing to buy property and stay for the long term. People who hear of Chicago are first attracted by its reputation of being a cosmopolitan and well connected city, but they stay here because they city offers them a quality of life many other cities are unable to provide: theater, festivals, clubs, cultural diversity, fine arts, music, and the country's second largest international airport.

Under Daley's plan, success will ultimately be measured by most outside observers in terms of economics. But Chicagoans will measure the success by their quality of life, and right now we are a feeling a resounding, positive affirmation.

For more information on Chicago's environmental efforts, please go to the Chicago Department of Environment website.

Christopher Hinton

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