Yazd University will host an international workshop on “Water and City” from September 3-6.
Vernacular Architecture Research Center of Yazd University, a state-funded research center in central Iran, has organized the four-day workshop in collaboration with Yazd Historical Town World Heritage Center, Paris-Belleville National School of Architecture, Parisian Institute of Research on Architecture, Urban Structures and Society as well as Lab URBA of Paris-Est University.
Over 30 foreign experts in diverse fields of urban development and water-related architecture, will attend, Memarnews.com reported.
“Water and City: Hydraulic Systems and Urban Structures” includes five topics: Hydraulic Systems and Iranian Civilization; International Experience in Hydraulic Systems; Learning From History: Hydraulic Systems & Urban Civilization; Water Engineering & Architecture in Land Planning and Urban Design Projects; and Heritage & Innovation: Integrating Hydraulic Systems & Urban Structures Today.
The workshop seeks to provide a platform for sharing experience, knowledge and achievements in the area of hydraulic systems and urban management.
In response to the universal water crisis, especially in the arid and semi-arid regions in the Middle East, the workshop will highlight the role and significance of local initiatives in dealing with the worsening crisis.
The workshop encourages innovation, and in doing so refers to historical achievements, technologies and various scientific options. The main purpose of the event is to find vernacular solutions to the dangerous water shortages that are creating a new class of refugees, wiping out villages and small towns and creating monumental problems for governments across continents.
Those wanting to attend the workshop can refer to Confs.yazd.ac.ir/register.aspx. The last date for registration is September 1.
Yazd University is the venue of the workshop. It is located in southern part of the ancient city, near the ring road, between Imam Hadi and Shohadaye Gomnam boulevards.
A Crisis Unfolds
Iran will face chronic water shortages sooner rather than later, Energy Minister Reza Ardekanian said earlier this month. However, he did not recall that repeated warnings about the gravity of the problem to successive governments in Tehran by local and global water experts had fallen on deaf ears.
High consumption and mismanagement of water resources, including multiple damming projects on major rivers, both in Iran and the neighboring countries, have made a bad situation worse by altering the natural water flow. Iran is facing its harshest drought in half a century. Increasingly erratic rainfall across the region along with the construction of dams in upstream Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran, have reduced the amount of water flowing into key rivers.
The increasingly dry seasons have not only resulted in less rainfall, but also made the available water salty and unfit for farming.
When water levels are down, a phenomenon known as salt tide appears where the lower course of a river, with its low altitude with respect to sea level, becomes saline. If there are prolonged dry seasons, the phenomenon becomes all the more harder to overcome, leaving farmers helpless and searching elsewhere for income.
A large number of people have migrated from rural to urban areas as a result of water shortages giving rise to unemployment and overpopulation in the bigger cities already under stress due to increasing demand for jobs, water, living space, electricity, public transport, schools, medical services and more.
