How the West Was (Really) Won: Water and the Emergence of Los Angeles

Abstract

The outsized role of infrastructure in shaping urban landscapes is ever-present in American cities, most exaggerated in a place like Los Angeles. Desert, floodplain, dry scrublands, and mountains—LA’s menu of inhospitable terrains, once seemingly tamed by the infrastructures of the past, have undone our best efforts to control them. Southern California, currently experiencing yet another multiyear drought, is completely reliant on aging infrastructures to support the region’s unsustainable land use patterns. In Los Angeles, the development of water infrastructure and urbanization are inextricably linked. Understanding one requires an understanding of the other. Completely dependent on distant sources, Los Angeles must reimagine its relationship to water as it increasingly becomes a scarce resource. Through a critical analysis of the aridification crippling the city today, this thesis develops design strategies for new urban infrastructures which sustainably provide for local water resource management, relinquishing the city’s extractive reliance on its hinterlands.