Conference session

The relationship between urban life and water is perhaps the singular problem of our age, and the most dramatically under-appreciated. We have designed and regulated urban spaces for a rapidly vanishing climate, with reactive planning and no clear moral vision of urban citizenship for the world we are hurtling toward. Over half of the planet’s now 8 billion people live in urban regions. By 2050 that number is expected to be about 70% of roughly 10 billion souls. By that point, global average temperatures are likely to be 2-3 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. Urban water scarcity, already a critical global concern, will be rampant. Urban regions consume astonishingly vast amounts of water, and generate comparably vast amounts of waste. Yet the engineering marvels of urban water and waste systems are taken largely for granted. We turn the tap, we flush the toilet. Life goes on. There are a range of well-tested technological and policy solutions at hand, but if citizens and our leaders are simply not vested in the waters we drink from (and in which our waste inevitably ends up) then the hard work of science, policy, and advocacy will continue to fight steeply uphill battles against persistent confusion, motivated ignorance, widespread apathy, and diffuse hopes that things will continue on for future generations roughly as they always have for us. We need a moral vision of citizenship - and indeed, of basic humanity - to inform our planning for urban water futures in an increasingly unstable and unequal world.