2. Not a drop to drink

This week, we're talking about something fundamental to city life - something we take for granted so much, we tend to forget about it altogether. This week, we're talking about water.We talk Linda Tirado, the American writer and activist who spent much of January talking to the people occupying a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon. The siege, she tells us, is actually the harbinger of water wars that could one day grip the American West. We also talk to Karim Elgendy, an Egyptian-born architect and sustainability consultant, about the crisis looming in the Middle East, where the cities are burning oil to desalinate water to extract more oil. And we look at a map of a world where there is, if anything, too much water.Skylines is the podcast from CityMetric, the New Statesman cities site. It's presented by Jonn Elledge and Barbara Speed, and is a Roifield Brown production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.