4. Chicago, IL

The Wind at Its Back

When environmental officials send you a several-pages-long "Bird Agenda" for their city, you know they've got all their little eco-ducks in a row. Long-serving Mayor Richard Daley is committed to making Chicago a healthy and attractive place for all creatures great and small, and for residents and visitors alike. The mayor has had greening on his mind since he first entered office in 1989, implementing progressive and sometimes controversial measures. He's planted about a half-million trees, removed traffic lanes in favor of green medians and bulldozed a downtown airport, putting in its place a 100-acre park. Under the mayor's leadership, Chicago has become known as the "Green Roofs City," with carbon-sequestering vegetation covering more than 4.5 million square feet of rooftop. In September of 2008, Mayor Daley took his commitment to combating global warming a step further: he released an aggressive carbon emissions-cutting plan that includes changing city building codes, installing huge solar panels on municipal properties, and retrofitting low-cost housing complexes to reduce water and energy use. If the plan works and the city successfully cleans up its air, it'll be high on our list of places we seek refuge after the Big One hits San Fran.

(Photo by Dori)

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Stories and Perspectives

Turning Hot Black to Cool Green:

When a team of scientists swooped in over downtown Chicago last year aboard a police chopper, they noticed something astounding: the black asphalt roof atop the county building that adjoined City Hall measured in at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Armed with thermal imaging cameras, the scientists and environmentalists then shifted their equipment to City Hall’s “green roof” – a roof covered in lush vegetation. That roof, they noted, was cooling out at a mere 70 degrees. “It really confirmed a lot of what we knew” about green roofs, says Sadhu Johnston, chief environmental officer in the Chicago mayor’s office.more »

Watering Chicago's Food Deserts

Barack Obama’s career trajectory took him from the rough-and-tumble South Side of Chicago to the U.S. Senate and then, quickly, around the country as his party’s nominee for president. For the folks at Growing Home, a South Side Chicago-based nonprofit offering job training to homeless and low-income individuals through urban-farming, the goals are much more modest: a good job, a living wage and healthy food on the table.more »

Sears Tower Greening

At 1,450 feet and 110 stories, Chicago's Sears Tower is the tallest building in America. And soon—if officials have their way--the landmark building, all 3.8 million square feet of it, may become the largest green structure in the United States. In announcing the initiative, former president Bill Clinton stressed the benefits of green building. And they’re not only environmental. "This is not a big bottle of castor oil we have to drink," he said. "This is the greatest economic opportunity that our country has had to mobilize and democratize since we mobilized from World War II." So what will set the building apart from it’s not-so-green neighbors?more »

Chicago Resident Greens and Preens

Submitted by Claudia Louise Pesenti

Biking the boulevards in Chicago is a green pleasure rather than what it used to be: a daring ride through the asphalt jungle that the streets had become due to blight, lack of funding and civic responsibility. Now, trees line the streets of Chicago, corners are bursting with native plants, and folks are picking up the trash in their communities.more »