Sixteen years after its founding, the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization occupies an unusual position  among local and global green organizations: established and respected in knowledgeable circles, quietly effective in promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the buildings, practices, and leaders aligned with them, yet underrecognized by the general public. Puzzlingly, there is still no Wikipedia page drawing curious eyeballs toward the CSU. Yet those who understand humanity’s mandate to mitigate its own impact on the climate respect the CSU’s achievements. Once a year this unique group gathers to celebrate them, energizing the troops for the ongoing struggle to put the brakes on anthropogenic climate damage. 

This year’s CSU Gala at the Marriott Marquis (October 22, 2025) gave strong evidence that this campaign is unshaken by the transient political winds of climate denialism, puzzlingly resurgent even in a nation that once aspired to guide the world. Young talents and established leaders alike received well-earned moments in the spotlight, as attendees recognized the many ways these pioneers are coming to grips with the realization that, as founder Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, noted before one award, “the climate will not negotiate with us.”

A documentary by Basia and Leonard Myszynski, Women of Carbon (2024), earned the Creatives Advancing Sustainable Urbanization Award for spotlighting 19 women in construction-related professions – engineers, architects, and scientists, including current CSU President Yasemin Kologlu – who are advancing decarbonization with a potent combination of focused optimism and long-range maternal wisdom. Producer Basia Myszynski, accepting the award, recounted her inspiration to begin the project when someone asked her whether she had ever made an environmental film; momentarily embarrassed that her previous work hadn’t covered this most pressing of concerns, she studied the intertwined challenges of sustainability and equitability and resolved to make a film about “climate, motherhood, courage, and the power of building a better world.” Mother Earth, she concluded, is “fierce, fearless, fantastical, unpredictable, and protective. But she is fragile, and her resources are finite.”

Two Exemplary Project Awards followed. The first, presented by CSU Executive Vice President Emmanuelle Slossberg, went to St. John’s Terminal, slated to serve as the headquarters for Google’s Global Business Organization. This landmarked building from the New York waterfront’s industrial 1930s is now a 12-story community-centered workplace designed by CookFox Architects, with interiors by Gensler, general contracting by Structure Tone and Turner Construction, Oxford Properties serving as developer, and other prominent collaborators. Michele Neptune of Google accepted the award on behalf of the team, commenting on how the adaptive-reuse project respected both the decarbonization mission and the local ecosystem, including migratory birds and insects as well as human neighbors.

The other Exemplary Project Award, presented by Rick Bell, acting director of Columbia’s Center for Buildings, Infrastructure and Public Space, went to 555 Greenwich. Here, the structure is integrated floor by floor with neighboring Art Deco-styled 345 Hudson to form a full-block office building with a geothermal system and a heat-retaining concrete superstructure, essentially functioning as an enormous thermal battery that exceeds New York City’s climate targets. Thomas Aloi, vice president and director of design for Hines, accepted the award for Hudson Square Properties, a joint venture of Trinity Church Wall Street, Norges Bank, and Hines; the building was designed by CookFox, again with an all-star design and construction team including JB&B, Tishman/AECOM, Thornton Tomasetti, and others. “It is this effort,” Aloi said, “that inspires us to keep pushing boundaries and to keep us asking the question, ‛How can we build it better?’”

The Next Gen Award, presented by CSU founder and emeritus past president James McCullar, FAIA, recognized youth leader and entrepreneur Raina Maiga, currently working as climate advocate and CEO at a risk-management startup she co-founded, Compleyes.ai, while studying as a first-year student at Cornell. At an age (17) when students are typically concerned with dates, exams, school sports, and the like, Ms. Maiga has co-authored climate-policy bills backed by institutions across the nation, served as executive director and director of legislative affairs for Indiana-based youth organization Confront the Climate Crisis, and earned a Broward Youth Award. She noted that young people “often are hearing from people who don’t want to speak about real stories… only about stats. One of the things I ask every single environmental leader, every single person who’s in the work and bettering lives: Remember the stories, the ‛why you do it,’ because the stats are available on Google.” (It may also be worth noting, the next time an overamplified xenophobe makes sweeping, unevidenced claims about immigrants’ contributions and achievements, that Ms. Maiga is an asylum seeker from Burkina Faso who grew up in Indianapolis.)

Gina Bocra, AIA, vice president at WSP, was honored for her leadership at New York City’s Department of Buildings, where she led the team that developed the landmark carbon-emissions-capping statute, Local Law 97. Bocra, like Maiga, is a Midwesterner who “somehow made my way to New York and became a sustainable urbanist,” as she said while thanking everyone in the audience who chose the CSU Gala over the evening’s other options: “You could be listening to the mayoral debate right now. You could be watching Missy Copeland’s last performance. You could be at a Knicks game.” Hailing mentors in academic, professional, and personal life who shaped and encouraged her work, Bocra cited the well-known and still-powerful quotation attributed to Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Honors also went to MaryAnne Gilmartin, formerly of Forest City Ratner, now founder/CEO of MAG Partners, for championing women’s leadership in real estate while leading major developments including Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Pacific Park, the New York Times Building by Renzo Piano, the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech by Weiss/Manfredi, and a host of high-end residential buildings. On receiving the honor, Gilmartin shared the credit widely: “Tonight I represent the urban placemaker who believes that how we design, build, and live in our cities needs to help sustain both people and planet… the builders who know that beauty is not at odds with profitability… the talented team members at MAG Partners who know that we ought to look like the people we build for…. and the enlightened developers who know that architects, designers, planners, and engineers are our partners, not our vendors.” She also recalled a phone call with Rick Cook that convinced her to ensure that on a residential building in west Chelsea known as Mabel, where value engineers had tried to cut every imaginable corner, Cook inspired her to defend the decision to earn Passive House designation. “We got it done,” she said, “because we chose to do the right thing, the hard thing, the necessary thing, and there were other things that we chose not to do, which nobody will ever miss.” Hoping “people will think that developers do have warm blood flowing through their hands, that they care about the world,” she dedicated her honor to Cook and his firm.

Finally, the Lifetime Award went to H.E. Talal Abu Ghazaleh, former chair of the UN Global Alliance, ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and Development, as well as Chair of the CSU Advisory Board. Introduced by CSU founder and chair Aliye P. Çelik, and accepting the award on her father’s behalf, Jumana Abu Ghazaleh spoke of her father, “a Palestinian refugee who was never able to make it back to this ancient city, but whose dedication to building a sustainable, equitable world community has earned him recognition…. It is my firm conviction that what unites us as humans is far greater than what may divide us. We need to say this loud and clear, at this time of great turmoil in world affairs: I cherish the CSU so deeply because it was founded on this principle, and its reach and aspirations are global. I see and hear in the CSU echoes of my own conviction that if we work and cooperate together, nothing is beyond our reach.” Through the worldwide network that the CSU has built to connect professionals, the UN, and local authorities, she continued, its members continue to disseminate knowledge and best practices, guided by the conviction that “there is no greater reward than the betterment of our fellow human beings.”