Water economics essential principles: Part 1, water and cities
Not only does the availability and amount of clean water control the size of cities, management of water resources has been a principal driver in advances in technology, law and government, and finance.
The most basic of needs
That idea formed itself as I read, and then re-read, a terrific law article Thirst: A Short History of Drinking Water by Duke law professor Jim Salzman.
Often financed with the Basic Model
During April, I posted on it at length [10,000 words! These are supposed to be blog posts! – Ed. Hey, I thought it was really interesting — Auth.].
[The original post may be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.]
This has become a greater preoccupation for me because of AHI’s work for Slum Dwellers International. If housing is what makes cities, as I believe it is, then water and sanitation is what makes housing habitable, and hence what controls city scaling. Clean urban water is a problem in infrastructure, so as we saw in the extended multi-part post, urbanization has gone hand in hand with the development of civic infrastructure, both physical and governmental, to create the vast public works projects necessary to sustain increased density of people in a finite urban space.
A high-tech solution: the Life Straw filtration pipe
Here, extracted and purified from my previous seven-part slurry, are the major takeaways:
1. Water is physically a remarkable and challenging substance
Quick – name a liquid that isn’t water!
Wait, give me a minute
Most of those you could name – the alcohols, ammonia, even carbon tetrachloride – evaporate rapidly.
Water is the only substance whose most common state is as a liquid, and water’s in liquid form over a very wide temperature range.
Water’s physical characteristics confound easy management.
Water is heavy – it is difficult to move uphill.
Water is unwieldy – it cannot be packed or contained easily.
Drinking water is fragile – it easily becomes contaminated and unfit for consumption.
Anybody can see the difference between clean and dirty water
2. Management of water presupposes technology
Moving water thus involves securing a technological construct – a bucket, a can, a bottle – and bringing it to the water source.
Storing water requires large physical constructs.
Protecting water requires legal and social constructs.
Management of drinking water was central to urban planning in early settlements, as well. Thus one can find examples of sophisticated water management in virtually every archaeological excavation of ancient civilizations. Water storage basins with minimum storage capacities of 10,000-25,000 gallons of water have been excavated in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest.
Everywhere you turn, secure water supply defines urban viability. Control and management of water was a strategic military resource.
Urbanization requires water, water requires technology, technology requires law and enforcement, and it will also come to require finance (as I previously explored a bit in Meta-finance, Part 1 and Part 2). With their fourfold advance – water, technology, law, and finance – humanity has advanced all over the globe.
3. In pre-technological societies, water is non-economic
Dividing pre-urban from urban societies is their approach to water. In a pre-technological environment:
Water is free because no one earned it.
Water must be shared and protected.
Everybody needs clean water
As the Koran relates:
Anyone who gives water to a living creature will be rewarded…. To the man who refuses his surplus water, Allah will say: ‘Today I refuse thee my favor, just as thou refused the surplus of something that thou hadst not made thyself.’
Water use depends on need.
Everyone has a duty to share water. But ‘always ask.’
No one has the right to consume ‘too much’
Water’s cleanliness is culturally protected.
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Water hoarding is sinful, and will be met with retaliation (like poisoning the well).
4. Cities arrive as water technology (including legal and financial technology) permits
A healthy city requires clear water. Without it, you have spontaneous communities where housing consumption has outrun infrastructure’s ability to keep up – in other words, slums. Urban clean water requires technology – well, cistern, aqueduct, piping – which implies:
Who owns the spigot? Who built it? Who paid for its building?
Finance — to pay for the technology
Law — to adjudicate who has access to the technology
Government – to enforce the finance and law
The great aqueduct at the Pont du Gard
Aqueducts were among the most magnificent structures of the ancient world and some proudly survive today.
The Romans were 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.
Two thousand years and it’s still serviceable
Moving water involves technological constructs. Storing water requires large physical constructs – which in turn require large capital 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:
Remains of the Aqua Marcia, built just after the 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.
Two thousand years ago,
Are we making progress?
[Continued tomorrow in Part 2]
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