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Cities depend on water. Here's the best solutions for urban designers to ensure their security

2024-06-17T19:51:00-04:00

More cities will likely face these kinds of shortages as climate change, deforestation and ecosystems degradation increasingly threaten the natural systems that maintain water supplies. But nature offers solutions, too. By protecting, restoring and sustainably managing forests within their watersheds, cities can improve water quality and quantity in a cost-effective way. And they can make water sources more resilient to a changing climate.

The most recent ASLA survey of U.S.-based landscape architects confirmed the industry’s positive response to this critical demand, including that a total of 42% of respondents have said they are pursuing climate projects worth more than $1 million and another 29% saying the value of this work was over $10 million.

Mexico's recent presidential election is another barometer, as the environmental engineer and former CDMX mayor Claudia Sheinbaum’s ability to tackle the looming water crisis there proved a decisive factor in her historic victory. (A catastrophic 'Day Zero', however, still looms right around the corner.)

Arizona's state water supply loophole is causing a gold rush for multifamily construction

2023-11-14T12:31:00-05:00

Local leaders near Phoenix are placing limits on where new homes can be built, with the goal of protecting long-term access to water. But there's a significant loophole. [...] Policymakers may try again, and the governor has set up a task force on the issue. Ferris says the strength of Arizona's water law is that it links building decisions with water decisions. No other Western state requires cities to look a hundred years into the future.

Permitting of new subdivision construction has been curtailed in the Phoenix area over water scarcity, though a loophole over multifamily construction has led to a recent boom there as developers are still free to open state taps when needed in search of a requisite 100-year groundwater supply.

Small cities like Casa Grande and Buckeye are making the news as prolific cases, with around 3,000 and 6,500 new units permitted in each in the last two years alone. The official statewide need stands at 200,000 overall. Lawmakers are now trying to put a halt to the build-to-rent exemption in the face of a population influx and despite developer’s lobbying.

Arizona to limit construction in the Phoenix area as groundwater supply shrinks

2023-06-03T09:17:00-04:00

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

This decision, announced last Thursday, means that Arizona will no longer provide developers in some areas of the Phoenix region new permits to construct homes that rely on groundwater. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, sources half of its water supply from groundwater. The announcement will not impact developments that have already been approved. However, the state will be looking towards new water conservation measures and alternative sources to provide the water needed for these projects. The decision will likely have a significant effect on Arizona’s real estate market, especially in Phoenix, which has become the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country, due to the impact on housing affordability.

Now, developers looking to build will have to prove that they can ensure water supply for 100 years using water from a source that is not local groundwater. This move is another example of how the impacts of climate change continue to grow in prominence. In addition t...

UAE is making artificial rainstorms to mitigate intense heat

2021-07-23T17:55:00-04:00

With temperatures in Dubai regularly surpassing 115 degrees Fahrenheit, the government has decided to take control of the scorching weather. Scientists in the United Arab Emirates are making it rain — artificially — using electrical charges from drones to manipulate the weather and force rainfall across the desert nation. Meteorological officials released video footage this week showing a downpour over Ras al Khaimah, as well as several other regions.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by المركز الوطني للأرصاد (@officialuaeweather)

Called cloud seeding, this is a weather-modification technique that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds by artificially adding substances, called condensation nuclei, to the atmosphere. Given dwindling water sources, increasing temperatures, and a rising population, the United Arab Emirates hopes to regularly use this method to increase rainfall.

Based on research at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, scientists created the storms using drones, which jolted clouds with electricity, causing droplets in the clouds to clump together. The larger raindrops are then able to fall to the ground, instead of evaporating midair, which is what occurs to smaller droplets in such a hot climate.

In 2017, the researchers at the university received $1.5 million for use over three years from the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Scien...

Chennai, India's sixth-largest city, is nearly out of water

2019-06-27T15:54:00-04:00

In India's sixth-largest city, lines for water snake around city blocks, restaurants are turning away customers and a man was killed in a brawl over water. Chennai, with a population of almost 10 million, is nearly out of water. In much of India, municipal water, drawn from reservoirs or groundwater, typically runs for only a couple of hours each day. That's the norm year-round. The affluent fill tanks on their roofs; the poor fill jerrycans and buckets.

Chennai, the Indian metropolis with a population estimated to be larger than New York City, is facing a grim water shortage, and residents hope that officials can come up with short- and long-term measures to prevent "Day Zero" — just like Cape Town famously did during its severe water crisis two years ago.

Tarun Gopalakrishnan, a climate change expert at the Indian Centre for Science and Environment told NPR that the situation was shocking but not surprising; a crisis as the result of "a toxic mix of bad governance and climate change."

Water woes are creeping up on Phoenix, America's fifth-largest city

2018-03-22T16:01:00-04:00

Phoenix and its surrounding area is known as the Valley of the Sun, and downtown Phoenix – which in 2017 overtook Philadelphia as America’s fifth-largest city – is easily walkable, with restaurants, bars and an evening buzz. But it is a modern shrine to towering concrete, and gives way to endless sprawl that stretches up to 35 miles away to places like Anthem. The area is still growing – and is dangerously overstretched, experts warn.

With cities in the Desert West, like Las Vegas and Phoenix, rapidly growing in size and population, water is becoming an evermore hot commodity; all while the source of that water, primarily the Colorado River, is becoming increasingly unreliable due to climate change.

"And yet despite the federal Bureau of Reclamation reporting in 2012 that droughts of five or more years would happen every decade over the next 50 years," writes Joanna Walters for The Guardian's Overstretched Cities series, "greater Phoenix has not declared any water restrictions. Nor has the state government decided its official drought contingency proposal."

Thirst-quenching as Los Angeles heats up: Next Wave @ UCLA

2015-12-08T19:18:00-05:00

Last week, UCLA’s Hammer Museum hosted the final iteration of its 2015 program "Next Wave: Quality, Quantity, and Accessibility of Water in the 21st Century," a robust discussion series that has gathered experts in various fields to explicate and consider the most pressing issues surrounding water in the 21st century. This final event, subtitled "Thriving in a Hotter Los Angeles," grappled with issues closest to home, largely under the purview of the goals articulated by the ambitious "Sustainable LA Grand Challenge," a UCLA initiative dedicated to achieving water and energy sustainability in the county by 2020.

Claudia Bestor, the director of public programs at the Hammer, began the evening by introducing the speakers: Mark Gold, Associate Vice Chancellor for Environment and Sustainability (among other titles) at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA; Alex Hall, the faculty director at the UCLA Center for Climate Change Solutions; Eric Hoek, the founder and CEO o...

California Governor Mandates Water Restrictions

2015-04-01T18:49:00-04:00

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday imposed mandatory water restrictions for the first time on residents, businesses and farms, ordering cities and towns in the drought-ravaged state to reduce usage by 25%... [amounting] to roughly 1.5 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot of water equals about 325,000 gallons) over the next nine months... "We're in a new era," Brown said. "The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day, that's going to be a thing of the past."

Brown's executive order will also mandate:

Require agriculture to report more on their water usage so as to better "enforce against illegal diversions and waste"
A ban on watering lawns on public street medians
Significant cuts in water use for large landscapes like universities, golf courses, and cemeteries.
Switching out some 50 million sq. ft. of lawn for "drought tolerant landscaping"
A temporary rebate program for consumers to replace their appliances with water efficient models
Prohibiting new homes and developments from using potable water in their irrigation systems unless using efficient drip irrigation systems

Here's hoping these mandates are enough to somehow provide the 11 trillion gallons of water that California needs to recover from this very real and unprecedented natural disaster...

Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition!