Event details
Oct
6
HMEI Faculty Seminar: "How to Sink a Megacity: A Histoy of Water, Land, and Environmental Change in Mexico City" by Vera Candiani
Vera Candiani, Associate Professor of History, will present “How to Sink a Megacity: A History of Water, Land, and Environmental Change in Mexico City” Join us in the Briger Hall Auditorium, 11 Ivy Lane, or stream it live. Candiani is the second speaker in the Fall 2026 HMEI Faculty Seminar Series.
Modern Mexico City’s chronic flooding, aquifer depletion, and land subsidence are the cumulative result of five centuries during which land speculators, financiers, state engineers, and political authorities transformed a lake basin into a megacity whose very development generated the conditions for today’s water crisis. This talk traces how, from the seventeenth century onward, successive projects to drain the lakes, control water, and expand the city reshaped the basin’s hydrology while allocating environmental costs and benefits along class lines. By placing this process in historical perspective, the lecture explains how and why those conditions became embedded in the city’s development.
This seminar is free and open to the public. Lunch will be available in the Briger Atrium at 11:45 a.m.
Modern Mexico City’s chronic flooding, aquifer depletion, and land subsidence are the cumulative result of five centuries during which land speculators, financiers, state engineers, and political authorities transformed a lake basin into a megacity whose very development generated the conditions for today’s water crisis. This talk traces how, from the seventeenth century onward, successive projects to drain the lakes, control water, and expand the city reshaped the basin’s hydrology while allocating environmental costs and benefits along class lines. By placing this process in historical perspective, the lecture explains how and why those conditions became embedded in the city’s development.
This seminar is free and open to the public. Lunch will be available in the Briger Atrium at 11:45 a.m.
Speakers
Vera Candiani
University programs and activities are open to all eligible participants without regard to identity or other protected characteristics. Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.
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