Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Climate, Ecological Urbanism, Food, Water
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.
“The history of cities can be read as a history of water.”
…how convenient. How fitting to begin with this quote from the 1956 book “A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem” by the late Syracuse professor Nelson Blake. As good as Blakes quote is though, for my purposes I will add a second sentence: ‘and water is the history of life.’ In this sense cities, water, and human life have an intimate and binding relationship, that indeeds spans throughout history, and hopefully into the future.
With the quote above (and a basic knowledge of early human civilization and development) urbanity’s relationship with water is seen as one of reliance and fear, feast and famine, and more often than not, crisis and conflict. Given the human project’s desire for autonomy, our absolute requisite for water is quite antagonizing.
What is most fascinating about our cities and water, logistically speaking, is it is a resource that is both fought for and against by the city (a nature of fluidity, flux, etc). Unlike all other essential life resources (ELR’s) an excess of water results in as much if not more destruction than its absence. For this resource Equilibrium is a metalogistical necessity.
CALIFORNIA and the NETHERLANDS
California Aqueduct 
Dutch sea dike In modern western society these two state/nation regions share a lot in common: predominantly urban (despite very different population densities), marijuana usage, major ports, alternative culture, and modern architecture, but perhaps most of all water conflicts. For the whole of their histories, California has been fighting for water with aqueducts, and the Netherlands, fighting against it with dikes.
In addition to countless networks of irrigation systems, California has 701 miles of aqueducts and major pipelines delivering water to over 23,000,000 people. That is about 2 inches of linear aqueduct per person. A pretty significant infrastructural defense system (defense against water deficiency). The Netherlands on the other hand has 3,500 miles of dikes serving 9,000,000 people that live in lands resurrected from the rising sea. Thats about 7 inches of linear levee per person. With almost 400 more years of infrastructural warfare (Defense against excess water), I am not surprised that the Dutch seem to have had at least a more lasting success. Regardless of water war bragging rights both lands are fighting the same foe, albeit for different reasons.
Its interesting to see how each urban culture is so old-fashioned. California builds expensive aqueducts, which strikes me as vividly Roman, and the Netherlands builds walls, while European cities such as Barcelona, Vienna, and Berlin are just now reeking the benefits of tearing them done. Both examples show the logistical extremes cities are willing to go to manage water and grow and prosper. Hard to say whether these cities are backwards or visionary.
Roman aqueduct Segovia, Spain
Berlina Wall ca. November 9th, 1989
As highlighted by fellow crisis-city.org blogger, Nilus Klingel, in addition to the internet (as exampled by blog posts), water will continue to serve a role as one of the building blocks of successful civilization and cities. Highly developed urban regions such as the Netherlands and California, are extremes, as a majority of the largest cities in the world lack the political and fiscal authority to enact such significant water infrastructures. That being said, although I am fascinated by large scale preventative measures (best exampled by London’s Thames Barrier), I am increasingly interested in the metalogistics of water at a grass roots level, at a scale of architecture and the human being. Lots of small changes instead of a few big ones. Rather than inches per person of aqueducts and levees it could be gallons of recycled water per house. Or perhaps we design cities with water instead of against it (ex. wetland river parks). Perhaps water becomes post-logistical. Rather than being managed like an object, in measured amounts, we need to perceive water as a condition. Not stagnant or finite, but edgeless, without shorelines or sea levels (section nor plan). As the water changes so could we, “freed of all dimensions.”
Yves Klein. Blue Sponge (L'Eponge bleue), 1959. Dry pigment in synthetic resin on sponge
WATER (ARCHITECTURE/URBANISM LINKS:
Alphabet-City is a wonderful event that takes place annually in Toronto. Started by director John Knechtel in 1991, the week-long symposium/party in which the people of Toronto and world experts get together and discuss real world issues as they relate to urbanity (very Neo-athenian). Each year they take on a different issue at the symposium, followed by a subsequent book and web content. A fascinating model of collective urban self-awareness, this event seems outstanding and I look forward to seeing what they cover in the future. The most recent conference covered water, and the book and website content are quite good. The online media includes waters role in climate metaphysics, the public bath and the city, and water’s use in psychodrama through sound. I wish more web-content was available but a look through the festivals schedule is a who’s who of interesting artists and experts to follow up on.
|2| H2OLLAND: Architecture with Wet feet
H2OLLAND is an online exhibition of various themes related to water urbansim, including ideas, urban planning, water dwellings, working on water, engineering works, crossing water, and leisure and culture. In addition to an excellent introductory article the website also has a projective synopsis and a list of documented projects for each theme. This is a great source for projects from a culture who is incredibly intimate with water. For more on the Dutch and their ideologies involving water/urbanism and climate change check out this OpEdNews article.
|3| The digital Water Pavilion
This thing is just brilliant and cool, and an architectural must see (before including its message about water.) The design is joint effort of the MIT Media Lab‘s Smart Cities Group (also see http://cities.media.mit.edu/ a must see) and Carlo Ratti Associati. Quoting the pavilions beautifully designed website, in regards to whatever you think a water pavilion may be, “At its core, the DWP has been designed to be an open system where its technologies can be improved upon and can evolve with advances over time. The pavilion is also an open system in the sense that the designers do not decide how it reacts, but leave it in the hands of its users.” This is a brilliantly designed project, that has been instrumental in attracting attentions to the pleasures and potentials of water urbanism.
|4| Kelly Shannon Lecture at the AA
This a pretty interesting hour long 100 minute of a lecture water urbanist Kelly Shannon gave at AA in November of 2009. In many ways the lecture is a synopsis of some the content in her excellent book Water Urbanisms, but the lecture focuses more specifically on Asia for its project/issue content. Shannon’s research work is phenomenal, and it spans architecture, ecology, landscape, and geography. One of the top water-urbanism experts.
|5| The water Underground: Video from Center for Urban Pedagogy
As one of its public initiatives the Center for Urban Pedagogy put together this 24 minute video that takes a look at New York cities water and sewer system, dramatizing its general complexity. While the video is aimed at the general public (not necessarily water-urbanist enthusiasts), it deals with real citizens, and workers from New York City and is a unique look underground.
|6| Waterstudio
Although the site does not offer an excess of content, The dutch office has been producing an proposing countless projects of floating and water friendly urbanism (especially dwellings). Water is all these architects deal with and as previously mentioned, the Netherlands is a great spot to be practicing this niche interest. I will be curious to see what this studio produces as the work becomes more relevant.
|7| Forecasting water stress: a BBC map
This BBC map touches on one of my recent general interests (mapping future climate hospitable places.) I have been wondering if climate change becomes climate chaos at what point will environmental stability become a new form of attractive capital for city… which cities will receive the flocks of environmental refugees (one of my thesis ideas). According to this BBC map it wont be Las Vegas, Cairo or Beijing.
|8| Wired Magazine on Peak Water
A long but interesting look at how the regions of arizona, greater London, and Australia are coping with drought and eminent water shortage. The article includes some excellent global water infographics.
|9| Pruned looks at Kieran Timberlake Associates, Sidwell Friends School
The short write-up on the projects artificial wetland machine, includes some very descriptive imagery.
|10| Personal water transporting inventions.
As posted by treehugger.com these two inventions are worth a look. A water bike and the hippo water roller. Examples of simple personal solutions to serious logistical problems.
I want to conclude with this floating LED art piece by The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia Univeristy from September of 2009. The floating structure of led lights and aquatic sensors created a feedback loop and a poetic connection between humans and the water as a 3D environment.
Best quoted from the website:
Amphibious Architecture submerges ubiquitous computing into the water—that 90% of the Earth’s inhabitable volume that envelops New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged. Two networks of floating interactive tubes, installed at sites in the East River and the Bronx River, house a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared environment. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and to contribute to a display of collective interest in the environment.
Instead of treating the rivers with a “do-not-disturb” approach, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. Instead of treating the water as a reflective surface to mirror our own image and our own architecture, the project establishes a two-way interface between environments of land and water. In two different neighborhoods of New York, the installation creates a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river. It makes visible the invisible, mapping a new ecology of people, marine life, buildings, and public space and sparking public interest and discussion.
