Overview

Moving between shower drains, aqueducts, rain gardens, and even kitchen sinks, Replumbing the City traces the enormous urban waterscape of Los Angeles in a state of flux. For more than a century, the city of Los Angeles has relied on faraway water for the vast majority of its municipal supply, but climate change is making these distant sources much less dependable. To adapt, Angelenos—including city engineers, advocates at NGOs, and residents—are developing new water supplies within the space of the city. Sayd Randle's ethnography examines the labor of replumbing LA's sprawling water system, detailing how a desire to sustain unlimited and uninterrupted water provision for paying customers is reshaping the urban environment and its management. Tracking how such projects redistribute the work of water management, the book explores thorny questions of how the labor of climate adaptation should be mobilized and valued.

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9780520394056

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Reviews

""Fascinating. . . . From an ethnographic perspective, [Randle identifies] important challenges and opportunities when localizing urban water supplies."" * Water Shelf *

""Fascinating. . . . From an ethnographic perspective, [Randle identifies] important challenges and opportunities when localizing urban water supplies."" * Water Shelf * "". . . Randle provides a valuable — one might even say vital — understanding of 'hybrid labor' of humans and non-humans in maintaining groundwater-replenishing landscapes."" * Maven's Notebook *

Author Information

Sayd Randle is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Singapore Management University.

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