I understand in a post AC world that cooling is not the issue. However, I dont understand why we make cities in deserts when water consumption is so great. How do cities like Las Vegas supply so much water.
Even if they have access to water, why would you want to build a city where temperatures are so brutal. The same goes for northern cities in Canada to be fair.
(I am Canadian so sorry if it is an obvious answer)
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It’s always water. Whenever there is a city, there is or was a fresh water source. Once you’ve settled and own a whole bunch of land around a water source, there’s risk in moving to some place “nicer” but being less wealthy.
It’s cheap. Outside water, there are lots of resources. History of inhabitants for a long time make it a population center over time. Some people like the heat over the cold. Someone else probably has a more through explanation lol
Las Vegas is an international model for water conservation in desert regions. Our water usage is extremely low and our reclamation efforts are some of the best in the world. We use a tiny fraction of the local water supply compared to the desert areas of Arizona and California that share our water supply.
If there are natural resources available to exploit, then settlements will pop up. Northern Canadian cities grew on the back of mining, forestry, oil, fishing, etc. and those that were able to diversify flourished.
I think in the case of LV they just needed a settlement somewhere on the railroad routes for supplies, and then the Hoover Dam provided easy energy and required a lot of workers to build it, then things snowballed from there.
This has always struck me as odd too, big cities in the desert. I’m thinking of Las Vegas or Tucson in the US.
For these places, water is the main issue, and one that is unsustainable.
There’s an old saying about water in the American west: “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.”
Given current use, there’s gonna be a lot of arguments and court cases soon enough.
Las Vegas *was* built on a spring. It has since grown far bigger than the water the spring provided. The Las Vegas Springs were a valuable stopping point for people going west to Southern California, although the value of its location today is being just over the state border where Nevada laws allow things that you can’t do in California.
Usually an economic or strategic benefit to them, initially. In the American West/SW there were gold, silver, and mineral booms that spawned cities that had varying longevity.
Military bases have also been built there, and those need places to house people, and those people need things to do and infrastructure. More business means more people, which means more business. Eventually you get a city.
Cities are actually very efficient at using water. It’s a very common misconception that cities are the primary water users. Agriculture, by far, uses the most water. And it’s not even really close.
The much better question is why do we do so much agriculture in the desert?
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