Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from the previous Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]

 

In Part 1 on the economics of water, I claimed that because housing is what makes cities, piping and water management was a precondition of forming cities, and is a controlling variable on successful urbanization in the global south, where the world’s rapidly expanding cities are creating spontaneous communities that represent their slums.  I’m interested because clean water and sanitation materially influences city scaling, and because the world’s poor areas are facing challenges that have recurred throughout history, as shown in Duke law professor Jim Salzman’s article Thirst: A Short History of Drinking Water,

 

Rome is the first great city defined by its management of drinking water.  Irrigation reached new heights in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,

 

You may think this an exaggeration …

 

But take a look at the ruins

 

and while the cisterns and storage basins of Mesapotamian cultures were impressive feats of engineering, they cannot compare with the graceful aqueducts that carried clean water to the great Roman cities. 

 

The great aqueduct at the Pont du Gard

 

Aqueducts were among the most magnificent structures of the ancient world and some proudly survive today. 

 

Still standing, and you can walk atop it

 

The water fountains that continue to define the splendor of Rome were important parts of the city’s drinking water provision over 2,000 years ago. 

 

The faucet’s new …

 

Rome is also the first major city we know of that managed drinking water as a priced resource.

 

The more I investigate the cities, the more I find all roads lead to Rome. 

Even from far Britannia, the road leads to Rome

 

I’ve previously posted about Rome as the inventors of apartments (insulae), and of the world’s first homeownership subsidy.  The Romans appear to be the first culture that seriously thought about civic infrastructure, from their roads to their forums.

 

 

We find the same attention to long-term viability inherent in the Roman approach to water, where the world’s largest city was sustained on the world’s first municipal water supply that mixed a free public good subsidized by the state, and the world’s first private pricing market in water.

 

1.         The city’s growth was constrained by water

 

The pre-urban Rome was founded among the seven hills because water was plentiful:

 

Because of Rome’s high water table, there was plentiful water available from local wells and springs.  The great water engineer of Rome, Frontinus, makes this clear at the very beginning of his treatise of water management, De Aquis Urbis Romae, when he states that “the Romans were satisfied with such waters as they drew from the Tiber, from wells, or from springs. Esteem for Springs still continues.” 

 

Urbanization increased population density, and that led to a tougher problem: not getting the water in, but getting the effluvia out:

 

It’s not quite so clean coming out

 

Over time, however, as the city’s population grew the water of the Tiber became increasingly polluted, particularly because the city’s main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, flowed directly into it. 

Just by itself, the Cloaca Maxima is an impressive feat of organization and engineering.

The Cloaca Maxima

The good news is it’s well built

The bad news it flows into the water supply

 

2.         Water requirements rose faster than population, as urbanization increased demand

 

When we think of Roman water, we think of aqueducts, those repeated demonstrations of the load-bearing capacity of arches.

 

So strong they could bear the load of a train or auto traffic

 

While aqueducts play a critical part in the story of Roman drinking water, that was not their original purpose. 

 

The main reason for construction of the aqueducts was not hygienic but social.  Bath houses were an integral part of Roman society and they required large volumes of water. 

 

In other words, as the Romans became both richer and more urban, they demanded better hygiene, and a form of social relaxation.  Bath houses are a civic feature, something necessary only in a city, where fresh water for bathing is unavailable because it has been built over.

 

A whole fitness center and social club

 

Increased supply did not sate the Romans; instead it led to increased demand.

 

The ready availability of a reliable source of clean water from the aqueducts spurred demands for its water to be used for drinking, fountains, gardens, and even public toilets. 

 

3.         Water demand spurred technological innovation

 

In Part 1 I observed that management of water presupposes (x) technology, and (y) legal and societal constructs.

 

Moving water involves technological constructs.  Storing water requires large physical constructs.  Protecting water requires legal and social constructs. 

 

Put that all together and it means cities cannot survive, much less expand, without state-of-the-art large-scale infrastructure – like aqueducts:

 

Rome’s first aqueduct, the Appia, was built in 312 BC.  

 

Remains of the Aqua Appia

 

In all, eleven aqueducts were constructed over approximately 550 years.  The Marcia was the third aqueduct, built in 144 BC, and much larger than its predecessors. 

 

A segment of the Aqua Marcia

 

Brought into the city at a great height, the Marcia’s waters were distributed throughout the city by gravity and its sweet waters were primarily used for drinking water. 

 

A single aqueduct running 56 miles

 

Aqueduct water was piped into large catch basins and then into storage reservoirs known as castella. From these, three piping systems branched out, each dedicated to a different use.  One set of pipes was used for the city’s basins and fountains (usus publici); the second set was dedicated to private uses (privati); and the last set to bath houses (balneae).  A priority system ensured that public needs were served first, then private uses, than baths.  

 

It’s evident that the technological innovation also required civic organization.

 

4.         Water management was a municipal activity

 

Infrastructure of the physical and economic scale represented by fifty-mile long aqueducts could not be undertaken, at least in those times, by private oligarchs or plutocrats.  That much raw material, labor, organization, and money, was the purview of the state.

 

In the time of Emperor Augustus, the number of lacus increased dramatically, from 91 to almost 600. 

 

It’s significant, I think, that the major building was done promptly after Rome had become an empire, not a republic. 

 

As Malott has written, following the overthrow of the Republic,

 

The early emperors combated this dwindling sense of civic duty by using the aqueducts’ propagandistic power to replace self-interest in the state with dependence on the state, which proved to be much more effective in the end.

 

Maybe.  Or maybe cost at the scale to build aqueducts is difficult to ram a fractious assembly.  Throughout history, massive building has signaled the will of a single leader, be he military or otherwise (think Robert Moses).

 

How dare you say I’m imperial!

 

And many of these were magnificently decorated with 300 bronze and marble statues and 400 marble columns.  These ornate water masterpieces strengthened the tradition of majestic fountains we still associate with Rome.  But why were they built? 

 

Ruins of the lacus curtius, in the Roman Forum

 

Classical scholars suggest these impressive public works were intended, first and foremost, as political statements, to remind the common people that they received their water from imperial beneficence in the name of the Emperor, Aqua Nomine Caesaris. 

 

To me, that seems too abstract.  The Roman citizen had no need of fountains to know of the emperor’s importance.  I like two other explanations: (a) imperial ego expressing itself as visible largesse, and (b) the awareness of Rome’s need for workforce housing.  We saw the same thing in Constantinople, where the emperor introduced the panes aedium, a bread subsidy tied directly to new construction homeownership.

 

A great empire needs a great capital, and a great administration needs a great workforce.  Binding them to the emperor through subsidy tied to tenure or home.  Again Professor Salzman quotes Malott:

 

[It is hard to] believe that the addition of 500 public fountains was truly a necessity [for drinking water supply], especially since wells and springs were apparently still frequently used.  However, by totally revamping the water system and making it more conspicuous and lavishly decorated, Augustus, and then Claudius after him, wanted to make the people forget that the older aqueducts survived from a time when the Emperor had no power. He wanted to erase the history of the aqueducts before him and suggest that they were his personal possession, and that although they were a free public service, the people still received their water by his generosity and permission.

 

How stupid can I be?

 

If I rule an empire this large?

 

[Continued tomorrow in Part 5.]

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