The canal and the pool: infrastructures of abundance and the invention of the modern desert

Abstract

Modernist ontologies of water physically materialise in Phoenix’s landscape: over 100 miles of canals convey water to the suburban grid, where thousands of gallons are piped into backyard swimming pools. The canal and pool are thus joined in architectural folly to move, hold, and control water in the service of sustaining the belief that dry ecologies are but supply chain problems in need of engineering solutions. These typologies reveal longstanding entanglements between the promises of modernity and aridland urbanism; and they further amplify the immense challenge of transitioning away from modern water infrastructure in the face of climate change. By using the canal and the pool as signifiers of the insidious entanglements between modernity, growth, and aridland urbanism, this article advances an historical examination of Phoenix that destabilises tropes of water scarcity as a problem to be solved but which has also created cultural perceptions of abundant water.