From Asset to Liability: The Sustainability of Waterscape Transformations in the Santiago River

Abstract

In Mexico and many other parts of the world, it is common practice since the late 19th century to pave riverbeds for public health and urban growth purposes. However, evidence suggests that costs associated with this practice outweigh the expected benefits, hindering the long-term environmental sustainability of growing cities. This case study undertaken in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, presents some urban, social and environmental problems resulting from paving one of the city’s river, the Rio Santiago, in the 1980s. We approached the Rio as a waterscape: a socially produced landscape where the presence and management of water is central. From this perspective, the paper’s main purpose is to analyze the Rio’s waterscape transformations within the context of the Metropolitan Region’s accelerated urban growth, including its watershed exploitation. We argue that the transformation of the Rio reflects a historical change insofar as waterways are presently perceived as a source of illness and pollution as opposed to a source of life and wellbeing. This paper concludes that the River’s transformations not only spatialized the conflictive relation society-nature but also the social inequities that yield from uneven urban growth.