Water From Within

Abstract

The increasing demand of potable water required by Mexico City has become so large that since the late 30’s the local government has opted for importing water from three different basins away from the city, causing damage to the ecosystems of the region as well as the eviction of thousands of indigenous communities from their homelands. Since the late 18th century, agrarian land reforms in Mexico have been constantly modified in favor of expanding the development of its main cites, creating a segregation of services and depriving native communities from vital resources as well as indirect consequences such as increasing their cost of living without improving their livelihoods. The tendency for the city’s water management model is to expand the supply regardless of the social and environmental costs, resulting in an ever-growing water infrastructure network that threatens the long term well-being of the population. This research seeks to understand the process of urban transformation of Mexico city and illustrate how water sensitive urbanization patterns in the city’s periphery may create an entry point for other disciplines and interested stakeholders to help ameliorate the ongoing expansion of the city’s water extraction infrastructure through an autonomously governed and decentralized collective water management system.