Inspired by ‘The 99% Invisible City, A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.’
Last year my son gave me the above book which
is based on the podcasts The 99% Invisible City.
I’ve read some of the book, though I haven’t
yet listened to any of the podcasts, which appear to be wide ranging and are
into the 400’s by now. The website is 99percentinvisible.org
I got fascinated by the parts of the book
that I’ve read so far and decided that my 2022 blogs would be about my own
city, Saskatoon.
“The health and growth of a city is inexorably linked to
water. Clean water must be available and dirty water needs to be removed.” – The
99% Invisible City
In Canada most of us take our water and sewage systems for
granted through this is not the case for many Indigenous communities.
“In 2010, the
United Nations General Assembly recognized the basic human rights to water and
sanitation, decreeing that everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous,
safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and
domestic use.”
“Canada possesses the world’s
third largest freshwater reserves. Despite that, 618 First Nations Communities
are not supplied with safe drinking water. This issue has been going on for
decades, with these communities suffering the full weight of the consequences
of the inadequate water they have.”
Both of the above quotes are
from an article by Sena Yenilmez
Indigenous
Safe Drinking Water Crisis in Canada- overview — The Indigenous Foundation
According to the City of Saskatoon’s website, our city has
one of the safest water supplies in North America. “The City of Saskatoon provides water and sewer
services to approximately 72,000 water meters with approximately 1,000 new
meters added each year.” We are among the lucky ones.
One way we can be aware of our
water systems is to look for manhole (wastewater) covers around the world. At
this time of year the ones in Saskatoon are mostly covered with snow so I can’t
run out and take pictures. My recollection is that most of them are fairly
boring, but there are all kinds of interesting ones around the world. The one
below is from Osaka, Japan:
You can find it and others online
if you do a search.
In Saskatoon we have drinking fountains in various public locations outside, particularly along the Meewasin riverbank trails. I was fascinated to learn that “One spring day in 1859, thousands of Londoners got dressed up in their finest clothes and gathered to get a view of a new civic sensation: the city’s first public drinking fountain.” – The 99% Invisible City.
When I visited Berlin many years ago, I encountered public
pumps. These are primarily from the days when not all apartments had their own
water and people had to go out and get it from their neighbourhood pump.
Nowadays some of these pumps still work apparently, though the water is not
considered drinkable.
Saskatoon has a river flowing through it which shows different colours depending on the season. The photo at the top of this blog shows a green colour in June. Did you know that the City of Chicago deliberately turns its river green (with a vegetable dye) every year for St. Patrick’s Day? That’s been happening for more than 50 years and began as a method to detect illegal sewage dumping. Plumbers used florescent dye which would turn bright green when encountering toxic sludge. More on this with time lapse photography can be found here:
How
Chicago River is turned emerald green for St Patrick's Day | Daily Mail Online
Canada has experienced its share of floods, and cities,
particularly those near rivers have to develop strategies to mitigate this. Saskatoon
has its own strategy. The City website states: “Though parts of Saskatoon have always been susceptible to
flooding, and flood protection measures to date have helped, climate change is
expected to bring more frequent and intense storms.” For more information
on some of these strategies go to Flood
Control Strategy | Saskatoon.ca
“Water is often a driving force behind the locations of
cities, but it also shapes and limits their physical boundaries. As the climate
changes, this fluctuating relationship will have a profound effect on the lives
of city dwellers that will be increasingly impossible to ignore.” The 99%
Invisible City
