An enormous public park system with plentiful green space, a great lake, vast public transit—there’s a lot you might consider green about the country’s third largest city. The city is especially known around the world for its architecture.

Chicago was an early adopter in the green building movement, says Brian Imus, executive director at the Illinois Green Alliance. “I give a lot of credit to the AEC industry that’s based here in Chicago. They had a lot of interest in green building,” he says. “They did a lot of experimentation early on on how to advance a lot of the new technologies and design best practices. As a result, not only did it have an impact on what was built in Chicago, the architecture community here got a reputation for understanding how to design and build green buildings around the world.” He says Illinois gets recognized as one of the states with the most LEED-certified square footage every year.

The city’s evolving commitment to sustainability continues to be seen in what companies choose to headquarter here, too, Imus says, noting businesses like Salesforce and Google, both of which are pursuing or have pursued all-electric projects in Chicago. “The new Salesforce Tower is all-electric. The new Google renovation of the Thompson Center is going to be all-electric. I can’t speak to why, other than I think for corporations like Google and Salesforce, it reflects their corporate values around the environment.”

Imus hopes the lessons of projects like the Chicago Salesforce Tower, which opened in 2023, can be translated into other buildings in the city, too. “How can we translate those successes so they can be easily adopted by other building professionals, by other building types? How do you start taking what we’ve learned and be able to translate that to our schools, to housing?” Imus asks. “I think there’s a huge potential and a huge opportunity to do that, particularly because there’s more and more financing and funding available for decarbonization projects and all building types, which will have a huge impact.”

Chicago has always taken its architecture seriously, says Kimberly Dowdell, current AIA president, who lives part-time in Chicago. “Architecture is such an important identity of the city, it’s prioritized,” she says.

Dowdell credits the city’s leadership over the years for not letting many buildings go into disrepair, which can have a very draining effect on people as well as hurt property values. “It can have a chain reaction, and I appreciate that Chicago has been really protective of its built environment. My hope is that other cities can take that more seriously,” she says.

While she thinks Chicago does a fairly good job when it comes to sustainable development, she’d love to see a more hyper-focused leadership role in city government with regard to reporting on sustainability efforts. That’s a great opportunity for a chief architect, she says, referring to a program she’s championing as part of her AIA presidency. “The chief architect role would depend on what the city needs, but I think at the very least championing climate action and looking at affordable housing should be at the top of the list, so I would advocate for that in Chicago.”

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