"Let them drink (more) wine . . ."

“Caracas, a city of 2 million, sits in a valley some 3,000 feet above sea level. The public water system relies on a succession of pumps that require massive amounts of energy. Without electricity, the water doesn’t flow.”

- Washington Post, 5 April 2019

The water crisis: “Let them drink wine.”

This was the title of my article for the April 1983 issue of Progressive Architecture magazine, 36 years ago, calling upon architects to pay greater attention to (fresh) water, even then clearly seen as a dwindling resource. 

The article outlined ways that architects could help. I was not particularly prescient; P/A had wonderful editors, always ready with terrific story ideas.  And, having come of age during the 1973 oil embargo, I was just one among many young architects who wanted to reverse our wasteful, destructive ways with natural resources.

“You can go three weeks without food,” I wrote then. “Without water, you’ve got just three days.” Apparently, we wanted a bit of drama in story that was essentially about low-volume flush toilets, grey water systems and water-conserving landscapes.

The drama about water is certainly still with us, maybe now more than ever. Given the latest news, it is not difficult to imagine a day—which might not be far off—when at least some Californians (not to mention Venezuelans, and Brazilians) turn on their taps to find that nothing comes out . . . or that they can’t use what does. An ever-larger segment of the globe’s population, including many of its poorest, cannot rely on regular supplies of potable water.

Sadly, we haven’t done enough in these past 3.5 decades to reverse the patterns that have created our present-day water problems, even if steps have been taken (lots of those low-volume flush toilets are in use today, for instance, and now there are many waterless ones).

To be fair, only some of today’s challenges stem from wasteful development and building practices, or from plumbing systems that remain stuck, so to speak, in the age of Thomas Crapper. There’s also the inexorable encroachment of saltwater on fresh water systems, plus almost boundless irrigation for agriculture and livestock feed, along with profligate industrial use, unchecked car-washing—and so on, and so on.

But architectural design and urban planning practices do have a key place in grappling with this resource crisis, especially in the developed world. We also have the bully pulpit—now devoted mainly to promoting carbon neutrality—which we need to direct at coping with and attenuating our growing water crisis.

These two issues are not unconnected, but people tend to understand water more readily, to experience its shortages more directly, and to get more exercised about it—perhaps because it is a vital resource (the drama part again).

As so many parts of our globe endure terrible flooding, it's ironic, isn’t it? “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” That might make a good title for a magazine article.