essential urbanism

Beginning with the crucial statistics (skip if it is redundent):

As this national geographic interactive info-graph explains and many people already know, of the water available on this planet, a small amount is actually fresh (2.5%).  Of that 2.5 %, only 10% is easily accessible for human use (although I suppose more becomes available as glaciers melt).  So with our .25 % of earth’s water, humans only directly consume 8% (ie drinking) while we use 22% in industrial processes (waste water), and we use the remaining 7o% for agriculture and thus future indirect consumption.

While the above data is global and impersonal, a related article looks at global freshwater inequality and more specific regions that have particularly vulnerable agricultural systems in this context.  The article compares America’s 1.3 million gallons per person in storage to Sub-Saharan Africa’s 26,400 gallons per person in storage.  Additionally nearly 94% of Sub-Saharan crops rely on rainwater alone.  As desertification expands and climate change forecasts call for less rain, massive regional food shortages become inevitable.

While this is certainly a grim forecast for extreme locations such as Africa, it is interesting to juxtapose other extreme situations such as contemporary Pakistan where historical flooding (a freshwater event) has overwhelmed and destroyed much of the countries crops, creating yet another food crisis.

As the International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI) World Water Week drives on this week, director Colin Chartres is calling for an increase in small-scale water storage infrastructures, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa where available freshwater is certain to decrease.  Given the juxtaposition of Pakistani flooding, I cannot help but imagine that large scale infrastructures should also be considered.  Imagine a temporary pipeline running from the mouth of the flooded Indus to newly constructed or existing reservoirs on the African continent (a minimum distance of 1400 miles).  One person’s crisis could be another’s salvation. Who would build such a thing? In times of environmental stability where would such temporary infrastructures be stored?  How would something at this scale be mobilized in real-time?  Regardless of these answer the global search for human homeostasis is certain.

Color enhanced Nasa before-and-after images of Pakistan's Indus River Valley

Aerial images showing a decrease in vegetation during a 2003 drought in southwest Africa

Additionally I wonder what role the city plays in this global equation.  The city is increasingly the habitat in which most humans live.  As a whole they have lots of people, but little naturally occurring fresh water and little if any agriculture.  Add the heat-sink effect in which cities are 2-8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than natural and suburban hinterlands and, ecologically speaking, our cities seem like paved deserts, hot with little water or plant life… urban desertification

Image created for the Aigües de Barcelona in response to a 2008 drought in Barcelona

For more information on Barcelona’s water importing click here

While most citizens have mobility, cities remain quite fixed geographically.  Indeed we are stuck with our cities location, but not with their designs or ecologies.  Cities can change, be retrofitted and re-purposed and they must be, they always have been.  While this is certainly the responsibility of urban governance and citizenry, the architect/urban designer is poised to participate as the realizer of built form.  Formally and ecologically, how do our buildings respond to increasingly radicalized needs of water and food?  Do we simply add vending machines to all our buildings and call it a day? Can architecture (and thus the city) provide for the gamut of human needs.