- Building Futures is about identifying projects, ideas and innovation that will create lasting positive change within the building community and the communities it serves.
- This BF reviews how Climate Change impacts the Chicago Metro Area and the upper Midwest.
- My professional career has primarily centered around building projects. Almost every project has assumed that there was a power, storm, sewer, telecommunications, transportation, internet “grid” to plug into. For too many decades these systems have been neglected, poorly maintained and not replaced when they were already many years, if not decades past their designed useful life. Driving through Chicago over the past few years has at times been both frustrating (bumper to bumper traffic, except during the first year or two of Covid) and exciting, as major work can be seen on the highways, ramps, El and Metra rails and stations, bridges and data centers…etc. We are still in the early years of reconceiving and rebuilding the core infrastructures that make-up the built environment in which we live, work and play. Building Futures (BF) will initially be focused on this core infrastructure and then over time will come back to the core innovations that will drive the future of building.
When people talk about climate change, they often talk in apocalyptic terms. In truth, the world will quietly continue undisturbed. It’s the built environment and the dense populations that have developed over the millenniums alongside waterways that are already feeling the stress. For thousands of years, we have built our cities, towns and villages alongside waterways (oceans, seas, lakes, rivers stream…) because they provided us transportation, food, and most importantly water to drink. As predicted the climate has changed, and storms have become more intense, and temperatures have become more extreme throughout the world and the United States. Interestingly, in Chicago where I have lived my entire life, my unscientific observation is that our temperatures overall have become milder. This is purely based on my personal sense that winter has been milder with less snow, spring has been warmer, summer (the summer of 2024) has in general been beautiful (of course we do have some of those hot 95 degree + days) and fall remains awesome. The one thing that has changed significantly is that our storms have become deluges. Much more akin to tropical downpours and the Chicago Metro’s ability to manage storm water has become much more critical (as discussed in BF-TARP). It is very possible that my personal observations do not align with actual meteorological data gathered over the last 20+ years. and I hope to explore the details in a future BF.
What is unquestionably true, is the intensity of Chicago storms. In looking briefly at rainfall data, it does not appear that the overall rainfall in the area has increased or decreased by large amounts. But the intensity of the downpours has increased, and it also feels like we have more sunny days. Perhaps Chicago’s weather seems to have improved with more sunny dry days and less frequent but more intense storms. If we can continue to manage the flooding from these storms, climate change may turn out to be a net positive for the upper Midwest and Chicago metro area.
Even though it is creating more and more damage via flooding, fire, hurricane and tornados throughout the rest of the country. If this turns out to be true it will be interesting to see what happens to our insect and pest populations. Without intense winters to keep them under control, they might become worse than the weather ever was.
Photo 1: Shows a graph of the measured temperature Change-Global Warming (Source Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
Photo 2: Shows an image of the Potential Future Illinois Michigan Temp Change