This is not a video about the ills of capitalism,
or the horrors of colonialism and imperialism,
systemic racism, or anything like that.
Okay,
I guess America's made a few mistakes.
This video is about land, water, and political boundaries,
and the story I'm going to tell you begins in the year 1878.
1878 was the year that the American explorer and geographer
John Wesley Powell published his plan
for how to divide up the arid western U.S. into political divisions
not based on arbitrary grids of lines and squares,
but based on the natural divisions of landscape.
The hills, mountains, saddles, and ridges
that divide the country into watershed basins.
You see, by 1878, the United States had laid claim
to the entire territory between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
brutally enforcing that claim
upon the hundreds of native tribes
who had their own long legacy of land divisions
based on climate, languages, cultures, and practices.
At the behest of the president, Ulysses S. Grant,
Powell trekked all over the arid west,
floating down the Colorado River and exploring its tributaries,
journeying over mountains and through valleys
in order to report back to Washington his findings
and recommendations for how to best organize and settle the masses
of European immigrants that were flooding across the country
from east to west.
He returned to Washington and presented this colorful map
to the U.S. Congress
that illustrated his suggestion for how to divide up the state's borders
in the arid west.
I expanded his drawing to show
what the entire nation would look like with watershed boundaries
as states' boundaries.
Now, Powell was not perfect.
He was a proponent of colonization,
which many will name as America's biggest mistake.
But he presented an idea
that if it had been taken up,
would have had an absolutely seismic effect
on the governance and land management to this very day.
Powell basically said that the government would be foolish
to just plop a grid of property ownership in states' lines
over the arid western U.S.
because the scarcity of water dictated that communities
needed collective management over that precious resource.
You see,
the branches of the watershed are like a tree,
surrounded by high ground that encompasses a drainage basin
or watershed.
A watershed is a complete hydrologic unit,
where the actions at the top of the watershed,
like deforestation,
impact the water quality, quantity,
and flow rates down below.
The watershed is a complete and connected unit
that is at its healthiest when managed as a unit.
But in order to turn land into a commodity
that could be easily bought, sold, and controlled,
it was divided into a grid of squares, rectangles, and right angles.
So when you place a grid of property ownership
over this non-gridded natural pattern,
then a whole host of problems arise.
So, first off,
in an area with scarce rainfall,
the owner, who gets this piece of the grid
down where all the streams come together,
will have way more resources and better soils
than one of these squares that's further up within the watershed.
This creates for an unequal distribution of wealth
based on access to water and farmland,
and sets up the conditions for conflicts to arise
between neighbors as well as between states.
See, the owner of the lower squares, where the water is concentrated,
can manage the water when it flows onto their property
at the bottom of the watershed tree,
but cannot manage water any higher up in the watershed
than within their property boundary.
So, there's no common management or recognition
that these parcels are inherently connected to each other
through the pattern of water flow.
At the same time that these lower squares
have the best water resources,
these squares here at the top
will probably have the best forest resources.
So, one owner can buy these squares
and log off all the trees and cause massive erosion
and landscape dehydration downstream
without any legal consequences.
Or they can excavate a mine
and use toxic chemicals which poison downstream water supplies.
But because these are seen as separate squares of property ownership
and not as a connected hydrologic unit,
then the person with all the water and good soil at the bottom
can't do anything about soil erosion and pollution above them.
So, you can see that there are inherent problems
in the placing of this grid of property ownership
atop the branching watershed pattern.
They are incompatible.
What Powell proposed
was not only to divide states along watershed boundaries,
but counties as well.
And he proposed there was no private ownership of water,
but that it would be a public resource
that was managed by the occupants of the watershed only,
and that water would not be transferred between watersheds.
So, no massive landowners or corporations
could monopolize the resources.
So, all political governance
would correspond with watershed governance.
I propose that the USA would be a much stronger democracy
if political governance and watershed governance
were one and the same.
This term was coined watershed democracy.
Another important word to learn
in the telling of this story
is geomorphic.
Geomorphic means to conform to the shape of the land.
So, Powell was proposing geomorphic political boundaries.
And when we think about the long-term repercussions of that,
it's astounding.
Imagine for a minute
that the Senate had accepted Powell's watershed democracy
instead of rejecting it when they took it up for debate in 1890.
If the basic development and political boundaries
had been drawn on a geomorphic pattern,
then I can imagine a lot of other development
transcending the grid of squares and right angles as well.
See, superimposing the grid over a non-gridded landscape
creates a whole host of other problems.
Let's think about how this may have affected
urban development.
Now, this is reminiscent of a typical suburban grid of houses
that covers much of the United States.
There are a lot of variations,
but plenty of neighborhoods look just like this.
The grid of property ownership
means that roads are typically laid out
along the compass directions
north, south, east, and west.
So regardless of the topography,
this grid of streets is laid down in the compass direction.
This impacts water flow.
In most cases, the streets replace the old creeks and drainages
and act as the new water flow lines
with storm drains collecting and draining water
straight down the roads,
regardless of the topography and hydrologic effects.
We can see some extreme examples like San Francisco or Seattle.
These are wet places, yet the paving and street orientation
literally drains the water off the entire city.
So, even in a wet environment,
you can create a hydrologic desert with groundwater depletion
because the street orientation is draining all of the water away.
But water is not the only issue.
Another big impact of the grid is energy consumption.
Now, I'm going to make a bit of a leap here
and say that if we were paying attention to development patterns
in relation to the landform,
we would also naturally start paying attention to development
in terms of the sun.
You see, in the northern hemisphere,
the sun rises in the east, arcs throughout the southern sky,
and then sets in the west.
Especially in the wintertime, the sun's angle is low on the horizon.
So, when a building is elongated on the east-west axis,
and oriented towards the south,
it receives the bulk of the sun's rays
through the coldest times of the year.
This is the foundation of passive solar design.
It turns out that when a house is oriented towards the south like this,
it stays warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
You can literally use the sun for all your heating needs in a sunny climate
with a well-designed passive solar house
if it's oriented on the east-west axis, facing south.
Passive solar house orientation is the simplest thing that you can do
to save tons of energy in heating, cooling, and lighting.
But if your house is oriented on the north-south axis,
then you're really starting at a deficit,
because for a house like this,
the west side, which is the hottest direction of the sun in summer,
is receiving the full blast of the setting sun
and necessitates cooling in many climates.
And then the smallest side of the house is facing south,
so it loses out on passive heating in winter.
So, when we jump back up here
and look at the average urban or suburban residential grid,
we find that typically half of the streets are running north to south,
and half of the streets are running east to west.
So, literally, half of the houses in America
are oriented the wrong direction for optimum solar gain,
and only the houses that are on the east to west elongated streets
have an optimum orientation.
And then of those homes
that are on streets with good solar orientation,
only half of those are going to have a lot of the windows
facing the sun.
Traditionally, most houses have more windows in the front of the house
with living spaces in the front and bedrooms in the back.
So, that would mean that in this grid,
only the houses on the north side of the road
would have optimum solar orientation
and optimum window placement.
Now, that's really variable
because in many suburbs,
a massive garage occupies the front of the house
and there are more windows in the back,
but the point is: take a look at where you live.
Only 25% of the houses, on average,
are optimally oriented with windows placed well
for passive solar heating and cooling.
Do you realize how much energy is wasted there?
Over half of all energy used in a home
is for heating and cooling space.
It's mind boggling to think of the repercussions
that placing houses on a grid
has had for the environment, economy, and basic resilience
of American infrastructure.
It's literally a crime of ignorance
because orienting houses properly is absolutely free.
So, imagine for a minute
that in 1878,
when Powell came out with Watershed Democracy,
the U.S. decided to pattern political boundaries on watershed boundaries,
and that geomorphic design was embedded
in the very fabric of all development,
and that people paid attention to where the sun rises and sets.
Think about how differently things would be here
if we lived in a pattern that was designed
with the shapes and forms of nature
instead of a grid imposed over them.
I honestly think we'd be living in a completely different
and better reality.
Now, I'm not saying that this layer of property division and water management
would solve everything.
There are many other factors needed to balance out the equation
of creating a benevolent and equitable society,
and addressing this mistake is only one of them.
But sh** man,
that was a huge mistake.