Not saying it doesn't work. Clearly it does, at least for a time or up to a certain level of population (Phoenix is banning new development because it's literally out of water, California is poster-child for water wars).
I guess it's something about spending that much effort and human capital to force something so inherently unsustainable that just seems... wasteful? Full of hubris? I don't know, maybe it's just a general sadness that this much ingenuity isn't being spent elsewhere where it could amplify existing natural forces instead of fighting a never-ending battle against entropy for something that doesn't want to exist.
Or maybe I'm just an internet sourpuss without enough vision. I just can't shake the "why are we doing this" melancholy about this.
Yeah it wouldn't be a city but just as a fun fact Las Vegas means "The Meadows" it had a really big aquifer and artesian springs fed by the Spring Mountains. It was sustainable as a town without the dam. Vegas also is allocated a very small portion of the water from Lake Mead, Nevada only gets about 4% of what is taken from it every year, and most of that is for farming still. The city probably needs like 1% to survive.
