Archinect - News

Mexico City’s fraught water crisis could prove decisive in the upcoming national elections

2024-05-13T17:36:00-04:00

It’s a crisis a decade in the making and, without dramatic fixes, experts say the city could be approaching “Day Zero” — when a city simply runs out of water — around June. That would leave up to 20 million people in and around the capital facing a summer without running water. June also happens to be the month when Mexico will choose its next president.

'Day Zero' (or the day water taps run dry) could be looming for June in the Mexican capital and home of over 9 million people just within the city proper. Its known air quality issues have improved under Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum’s green policy agenda, helping her meet some claims produced by rival Xochitl Galvez and her head environmental policy advisor Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, a former UN special climate envoy who promises a "civil rebellion" should the looming threshold be crossed.

"Even if officials pumped desalinated water from the Gulf of Mexico at great expense and environmental detriment," News Lines tells us, "it wouldn’t be enough if 40% continues to go missing. And it is true that the water which would have been saved by Sheinbaum’s promise to find and fix the city’s leaks would soothe the current crisis. Whether that would ever have been possible is another question, but it would not future-proof a system that is gradually drying."

Should the children of Flint be resettled?

2016-02-18T16:59:00-05:00

Given the threat of ongoing lead exposure and the community’s well-founded mistrust of government, should families be offered at least temporary resettlement while upgrades, repairs and enhancements are made to Flint’s badly contaminated water infrastructure? I ask this fully aware of how unprecedented and complex such a policy would be. After all, some 9,000 young children may have been exposed to contaminated water.

For more articles on urban health issues like the ongoing crisis in Flint, check out these links:

California Water Crisis? Now there's a board game for that!

2015-06-23T14:12:00-04:00

What would you do about the drought if you were Jerry Brown? A new 2-3 player board game by Bay Area-based graphic designer Alfred Twu allows you to play the politics of water in California. Twu specializes in designing games that try and have fun with complex issues. Currently, he is developing one called “California Housing Crisis” that deals with San Francisco’s runaway housing costs, and he previously designed a fantasy map for a U.S. national high speed rail system that went viral.

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