The Anasazi abandoned Chaco Canyon 1,000 years ago, possibly because of an extended multi-decade drought. It’s dry as a bone today anyway.
Perhaps people should not have settled thickly in the American Southwest desert during a historically wet period and expected it to stay that way.
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As if I didn’t have enough reasons to dislike Wells Fargo as a company, I just drove past their extravagant water feature in the Phoenix area.
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Solar cells don’t like high temperatures. Once the cell temperature goes above about 30C (86F) the cell efficiency declines significantly. Having said that, given the amount of sunny days they get, the cells could still pay off even with low efficiency.
I know I’ve seen research reports about new cell technology that performs well at higher temperatures, but the last I heard they weren’t in commercial use yet. Sorry - my reading is not up-to-date on this topic.
Possibly another problem with putting a roof over a carpark in a shopping precinct, with solar cells on top of the roof, is the cells would be relatively easy to steal at night time when the shopping precinct is deserted. I seem to see more solar cells on taller buildings. My first thought was that that’s because the taller buildings don’t get overshadowed, but on more reflection I wondered if it’s because it’s hard to steal stuff off the roof of a tall building.
Now if only we can come up with a good way to use the generated electricity to lower the external temperatures. We can use the power to pump up water from the aquifers and use the water to water plants or set up cooling pools in shaded areas, but others have hinted, that’s not a long term solution since it just drains the already limited aquifers faster.
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Tucsonians (myself included) laugh at Phonecians, while the Phoenix crew wonders why Yuma exists. At least Yuma has a river flowing through it. Phoenix has two rivers flowing into it; none flow out.
Solar panels run air conditioning, so Phoenix can stick around for a while.
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Phoenix was unlivable 30 years ago when my grandparents lived there and I would come to visit. If the air conditioning went out the majority of the city would be dead within days. Living there makes only slightly more sense than colonizing the surface of Venus.
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Isn’t that what phoenixes (phoenii?? no) do, burn up? Did anybody think this through when they named the place?
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There’s a reason shade trees don’t grow in the desert.
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Phoenix palms are reasonably drought-resistant but have the downside of toxic leaves.
PHOENICES. Harrumph.
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Ah yes maybe that’s why they started buying police drones…
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I fear that planting more trees is just going to create another problem, given the systematic water shortage in the region. There are definitely ways to build a habitable city in the desert, but that’s not what Phoenix is. Wide, car-centric streets, low buildings without thick walls or shade cloth, it’s the same problem other car-centric cities in the US have (a city too spread out means more infrastructure and less money coming in from property taxes to maintain it) but the problems become more obvious due to the heat.
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This seems like a good idea, but I can’t find the place anywhere. There’s only renders from when the architecture firm came up with the plan. Was it actually built?
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“Mistakes were made.”
Get your surprised face ready, because:
Sheesh so much of 2021 overemploys the word “performative.” That article is yet another a tragic-nay-criminal waste of precious resources.
To the workers great credit, they were climbing under the fence to water the trees, for as long as they could manage it. A good article. A necessary article.
And yet.
And yet…
Maybe with enough money (which the Saudis do have) they can offshore the problem… uh oh…
Thousands of years old, time-tested, and even in the midst of runaway climate change, much more sensible than 99.99999% of what the U.S. has currently in commercial, residential (or municipal fwiw) building stock. Yes.
Some fascinating completely sound technologies from Iran, e.g. windcatchers…
traditional rainwater harvesting…
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119776017.ch26
… Jordan has a fine, results-based project led by Geoff Lawton that is lovely to behold…
Fruit trees.
Graywater systems.
Vegetables.
Lots and lots of composting of various compostables.
Zero soil to speak of, and what there was, at the start, biologically inert.
A useful list of successful practices in that slideshow.
While not a perfect solution, the ecological and environmental footprint shrinkage as well as sequestering of tire-waste from landfills is worth noting and is at the core of an earthship home design:
Yeah, that would include Brad Lancaster, again, and ye gods does he get results!:
Coming back to this comment… and to Arizona (if not Phoenix specifically):
Fear not.
If there’s only one link you click or have time for, please, do click this one:
The time-scale usually required for this kind of success may not be ideal for the most impatient, the most Late Stage Capitalist-y folks who demand their environs instantly look and feel perfect.
Nature’s timeline in deserts or arid lands is much slower, and ecological restoration is much more sensitive and fraught in specifically these fragile places. It only takes a few jerks to wreck such places for decades, or centuries…
Well, the first article seems to say so:
A green oasis
Thomas Heatherwick has created a garden out of a desert in the heart of Abu Dhabi.
Thomas Heatherwick turns a desert green.
The British architect has reconceived and devoted a major piece of public land in Abu Dhabi to the wellbeing of its citizens.
As the Al Fayah Park is situated in the desert the project proved to be a challenging one for Heatherwick and his studio, the most serious of which was how to provide protection from the hot desert sun for visitors as well as the plants and vegetation.
Heatherwick transformed the existing public space into a park that takes its inspiration from European gardens. Featuring a blanket of grass and sustainable principles such as energy efficiency and water irrigation, the Al Fayah Park is a modern, sustainable public space celebrating the beauty of the desert and its distinct surrounding landscape…
The architect/designer dude’s portfolio shows a date of 2010:
… but yes, curiously lacking in final pictures of a completed project.
From this article:
I see that the project funder has a web site.
So I followed the link and used the contact form provided to ask if the Al Fayah Park project has been completed.
https://www.shf.ae/en/contact/
I am as curious as you are about the answer.
I invite you to ask them as well.
The world is watching, right?
We need all the solutions–viable, IRL solutions–that we can get.
Including Phoenix. And everywhere like it.
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How native tribes of Phoenix area lived in the desert? I suppose that their carbon footprint and expectations were a lot lower in 1500 than today
well, you could start with the HoHoKam people from that time. they built the irrigation channels that brought water from Rio Salado to the camps and villages. those same canals are today the basis of the SRP (Salt River Project) that still brings water from the mountains in the east to the city. the very same canals they built are still used, albeit with modifications and modernization.
add link:
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