TRICKLE DOWN

Detroit & The Great Lakes // Columbia University, GSAPP // Year 3, Semester 1 // 2017 // Instructor: Mabel Wilson, Trevor Lamphier // Collaboration with Zara Gilbert

Accelerated population growth and escalating disparity issues among nations are increasing stress on the availability of fresh water. Water-intensive lifestyles are escalating needs for consumption, industry, agriculture and irrigation from limited resources. The Great Lakes, one such resource, accounts for 21% of the total global fresh water supply, yet is closely regulated and administered by provincial governments, limiting use to states within the borders of the basin. As such, only 8 U.S. and 2 Canadian states are permitted to use the affluent resource. 

As the economics of water face unprecedented concerns, such important natural sources would have to be decentralized to create a new form of a global commons. The project explores the implications of a scenario in which the Great Lakes becomes subject to preservation efforts spearheaded by the U.N. Through a series of power struggles and maneuvers, the scenario evolves into the establishment of a water network within an “internationally recognized global resource buffer zone” through a renegotiation of municipal borders within the Lakes. Detroit, located on the coast of the Great Lakes, suffers one of the most severe water crises within the United States, and as such, would be a vital player in the initial agreements to help alleviate their issues while testing and developing new methods of processing, distribution and storage at the stages of conception, before being deployed at a global scale. 

As such, this project speculates on a new relationship between infrastructure, citizen and institutions over the course of the next 50 years that could be instated first, at a local scale in Detroit in response to ongoing water conflicts, and then at a global dimension in an effort to make all global freshwater resources a global commons, a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.