June 21, 2024 // Water Rationing and Its Impact on Construction
The Chuza reservoir at Chingaza national park.Photographer: Nicolo Filippo Rosso/Bloomberg
Let’s talk about water rationing and its impact on development and construction.
As the climate changes, temperatures increase, and extreme weather events become the norm, new realities like water rationing are becoming a fixture of some cities. An eerie Bloomberg CityLab piece this week reported that every nine days, each resident of Bogotá has to spend 24 hours without running water. It’s “disrupting the rhythms of restaurants, hair salons and even taxis, with residents and businesses in Colombia’s capital doing their part to help restore key reservoir levels after a long drought.”
In addition to small businesses, how will new reactionary regulations take a toll on construction? Developers in Phoenix, for example, recently asked lawmakers to alter a law that restricts construction in drought-prone areas. Their take is that building affordable housing is the most urgent need, and that water-saving measures can be incorporated into design.
Are you working on a project that takes rising temperatures into account in an innovative way? We’d love to hear from anyone pushing forward this idea. Any killer responses will be featured in the next newsletter!
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IDEA SPOTLIGHT
Apartment Store
Architecture practice Studio Saar has won the Davidson Prize People’s Choice Award with Apartment Store, a concept exploring how the UK's vacant retail spaces can be repurposed as community-owned housing.
The Apartment Store model focuses specifically on how empty department stores can help tackle the country's shortage of homes while creating "buzzing circular economy hubs" that reinvigorate towns and cities.
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