Governors Island Un-Earthed, Underwater New York

Excited to be a part of Governors Island Un-Earthed, Underwater New York’s Issue Number 16. My contribution People of the Desert 122°F meditates on the past and future of the miles of canals that thread through Phoenix and Tucson, AZ. The largest pre-Columbian irrigation system in North America, the canals were first engineered 2000 years ago by the ancestral Sonoran Desert people. This Native history was destroyed by the construction of the settler-colonial metropolis. Now an urban space of asphalt and concrete, this valley is ill-prepared for the heat of the near future. The summer now reaches 122°F. At 130°, what happens to the city’s vulnerable people, plants, and animals? Adaptation or abandonment?