On Thursday afternoon, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will take to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discuss infrastructure investment projects from the perspective of a municipal leader. The forum is being hosted by MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism as part of the spring 2014 Scaling Infrastructure conference.
The conference is designed to bring together political leaders, infrastructure engineers, professional designers and academics to brainstorm next-generation solutions to nationwide infrastructure. According to MIT’s CAU website, “the question of appropriate infrastructural investments and design scales is critical to the future of urbanized territories.”
Mayor Emanuel, notes the Associated Press, configured the Chicago Infrastructure Trust two-years ago, and with it hopes to revamp a slew of city properties to be more energy efficient.
Additionally, reads this afternoon’s conference program, Mayor Emanuel has undertaken his Building a New Chicago project, a $7 billion infrastructure plan intended to “revitalize the city’s roads, rails and runways, and create tens of thousands of jobs for Chicagoans.”
“You have less money and more needs. So, into that void steps the infrastructure trust,’’ Mayor Emanuel told the AP of his brainchild. ‘‘Everybody’s trying to think outside the traditional box while federal support is diminishing.’’
The Trust is already almost near completion of a 60-building project to make them more energy efficient worth $12.2 million in collaboration with Bank of America. “Sites include city libraries and buildings housing police, health care and other facilities. Officials say it will reduce energy use by 18 percent, a savings of roughly $1.4 million a year,” reports the AP further.
Mayor Emanuel’s keynote address is slated to take place at 4:30 p.m. Afterwards, he will be participating in a Q&A with Professor Judith Layzer.
Before being elected as Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel served as President Obama’s chief of staff and was a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois’s 5th district. He also worked as a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton
