As Mayor Rahm Emanuel reaches his second anniversary leading the City of Chicago, our “city in a garden” reflects on dramatic progress and continuing efforts to make Chicago one of the most competitive, livable, and environmentally sustainable places on the planet.
I’m thrilled to take on the role of C40 North America Regional Director. Having worked for two mayors in San Francisco, one of C40’s Innovator Cities, and on distributed clean energy systems internationally for a number of years before that, I’m a firm believer in driving global sustainability through local action.
There are more than 900,000 buildings in New York City alone. These structures, both historic and contemporary, literally define a city like New York. Landmarks like the Empire State Building draw in thousands of people every day for work and tourism. Yet these structures also place a high demand on our environment and national resources.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is one of the key organizing themes emphasized and often stated by C40 Chair, Mayor of New York City Michael R. Bloomberg.
C40 city Philadelphia is adding to its growing reputation as a leader in urban sustainability, with plans to create a more energy efficient building stock well underway. The city recently passed legislation requiring large commercial buildings to benchmark and report energy and water usage data to the Office of Sustainability, which will then in turn share this information with the public.
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