Conditions for Change
I care about progress. World Business Chicago, the organization charged with attracting companies to the city, is holding a competition for the next "Big Idea" for what the Chicago should become "by 2050." Many of the submissions, including the six finalists, focus on ways to improve quality of life through public amenities that incorporate natural elements. Think less concrete, more greenery. (None of the accompanying renderings showed their projects mid-winter, projecting instead a vision of an eternal summer…but I digress.) Generating imaginative visions of a more humane and beautiful city is noble and needed, but largely empty without the means to realize them. Let’s start there: less what, more how. Navigating the City's multi-layered bureaucracy is daunting. A colleague recently informed me that a fairly modest, fully-funded, community-enhancement project that his organization had been working on was finally being installed. Powerless, they have waited at least 5 years for some truly petty legal issues between two of the municipal entities involved to be resolved. Shifting internal structures and processes is far less appealing, and more challenging, than creating images of tree-lined cityscapes. Working on sustainability issues, I've been involved in my share of "blue sky" competitions. They can be fun, interesting, and inspiring, but also, like a sugar rush, leaving you crashed afterward. The real work, the kind that will lead toward creating the conditions for compelling visions to come fruition, is far less creative and visible, and more arduous and difficult. It's getting my friend Mike's project issues resolved in 5 days, or even weeks, rather than years. My patience gets stretched; the clock is always ticking.
