drinking water thinking cities death, life and drinking water
Water is the stuff of life. 1 In North America, drinking water each day is considered a healthful practice. How- ever, the recent death of a Californian is a disturbing case of drowning from the inside out. On the 12th of Janu- ary, 2007, Jennifer Lea Strange par- ticipated in a radio show competition and drank so much water so suddenly that she died of water intoxication. 2
processes | urban water by cecilia chen
water management life cycles climate change narrative paths water commodification
effluent that it absorbs. This water continues on, carrying material memories of the city to places downstream. Water moves between scales to blur the personal and the epic. Drinking from a tap brings my body water that has traveled endlessly in the hydrologi- cal cycle before undergoing the sanitizing process- es of a municipal water treatment plant. My body absorbs water to replenish and flush my innards. Eventually I urinate and then flush. Water that was within me is suddenly without – quickly moving downstream in shared waterways. We all contrib- ute to the landscape.
Cities and Water Almost all cities are founded near water: for drinking, washing, transport, agriculture, industry and pleasure. Oceans border Vancouver and Hali- fax. Winnipeg and Ottawa are located on rivers. Toronto sprawls on the shores of Lake Ontario. Montreal is an island in the Saint Lawrence. Yet un- derneath many cities there is another kind of water – an invisible infrastructure that supports urban life. The water in this buried network once fell from the sky, formed the current in lakes and rivers, and filtered slowly into underground aquifers. Our municipal waters are well-traveled. For example,
pesticides used in farming along the Ottawa River soon flow along the shores of Montreal and must be filtered out through water treatment facilities. The transgressive behaviour of water links cities to a much larger context. Metamorphosis and Transgression Water is always moving: waves endlessly morph into crest into trough into crest. Water changes form so radically that it easily becomes humidity, fog, rain, snow, slush, ice or an oil-slicked puddle. In its many shapes water flows from elsewhere, through and then past urban boundaries. It bears traces of the places through which it flows and the
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