Two Decades of GPLEX: Why We’re Returning to Chicago
Written by Kristen Angelucci, Cofounder of Myth and GPLEX Program Advisor
To embrace, and lead with intention through, the inevitability of change. That's the ultimate call of everything from parenting to organizational strategy to yoga and the seasons. And to me, it’s the call that has always been at the heart of the Greater Philadelphia Leadership Exchange. To build, reimagine and redefine.
It’s been 20 years since the inaugural GPLEX in Chicago - and as our original host city continues to prove, a lot can happen in 20 years. This year, we revisit Chicago, look at the last two decades of Philadelphia, and plan for our collective futures.
TimeOut readers just voted Chicago the most beautiful city in the world. That’s a notably impressive feat for a city that burned to the ground barely more than 150 years ago. While Philadelphia’s Boat House Row, Franklin Institute and Academy of Music were thriving, Chicago was still emerging from the ash.
The parable writes itself: from tragedy came beauty, from chaos came opportunity. World-class architects vied for the chance to conjure a skyline from the ruins. City planners had latitude to tackle old problems with new solutions, building the foundation for everything from innovative public transportation to cleaner water. By just 20 years after the fire, the city’s urban footprint had more than doubled, and the population more than quadrupled, from pre-fire levels.
Cities, like nations and people themselves, are rewritten by time. We reshape, with the ever-present opportunity to become something unexpectedly better - as much as we may wish we didn’t have to burn down to get there.
I am sure that there are many beautiful songs about the Windy City, but the one that means the most to me is Chicago by Sufjan Stevens. “You came to take us,” Sufjan sings, and I think of the fire, “All things go, all things go.”
“To recreate us,” a city forced, as so many have been and so many will be, as Los Angeles now is, to build, reimagine and redefine, “All things grow, all things grow.”
What has been scorched in Philadelphia, and in Chicago? What has taken root in its place? What is growing?
What will we build, reimagine and redefine, together?
