The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
newyorker.com
The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
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Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#2The final quote is chilling:
“We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.”
We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers.
The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#3The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
Presumably the parent is referring to this novel:
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#4The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
Presumably the parent is referring to this novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
Yup. Paints a compelling, if gritty and dystopian, view of the American Southwest in an era of 'not enough water to go around'.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#5I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk.
I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this?
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#6I read that as being harshly sarcastic but I'm now thinking it might be unintentional the way they make these people out to be obviously the source of their own issues.
It seems like the suburbs who actually pay taxes to provide the water are being prioritised for water access and the people who intentionally built were there were no rules are upset that other people aren't following the rules.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#7The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
Exactly my thought... quite freaky to see it unfolding like that.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#8I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure.
Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them zombie cities or something like that.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#9I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them…
I have read something similar somewhere in the sphere of StrongTowns, I believe. Basically the story goes that infrastructure was paid for by expansion, which required more infrastructure; and so the pyramid scheme was made. The people got these godawful strip malls, "stroads", and suburban sprawl. The towns kicked the problem down the road but once the expansion has to stop, the whole thing comes apart.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#10I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them…
You are probably thinking of The Growth Ponzi Scheme[0], which was adapted into a video series by Not Just Bikes[1].
[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...