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Hothouse Flowers: Water, the West, and a New Approach to Urban Ecology

Scarrow, Ryan Matthew
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471483922

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Sociology.
The Western United States contains not just one of the most arid regions in North America, but also the most urban region of the country. How to supply water to urban areas is one of the great questions of any society, and in the Southwest this was answered through a massive infrastructure centered around the Colorado River. It is my contention that the cities that received this water – such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego – have been artificially subsidized in their population and land area growth, and have had to develop specialized economic functions in order to justify further subsidies of water from the river and, by extension, the rest of the country - that they are, in plain terms, hothouse flowers transplanted into an environment that they could never live in without massive inputs. Multiple strands of urban and environmental theory are then presented and examined to gauge their ability to explain, let alone predict, the existence and development of such cities; while human ecology and urban political ecology have the tools and theoretical power to do so, I contend that the presence of technology and money – whether private or from government – is so new and combines so effectively in the form of these hyperspecialized cities that previous theories must be updated. After establishing that there is a sufficient distinction between metropolitan areas in the Colorado River System (MSAs that receive water via the Bureau of Reclamation’s massive infrastructure) and those in the Rest of the Arid West, in addition to the rest of the United States, I then conduct time-series regressions with panel-corrected standard errors and conclude the following. Metro areas in the Colorado River System are larger and grew faster than their Arid counterparts in population and land area. The availability of Colorado River water induced land area growth in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. Metropolitan economies in the Colorado River System are somewhat hyperspecialized in that they rely upon certain tertiary & quartenary sector activities more than the rest of the country, but these economies are also not generating much benefit considering the environmental and national subsidy being provided. And lastly, the metro areas are heavily reliant upon a river that, according to the most likely scenarios of future projections and climate change forecasts, will only decrease in water output, putting further strain upon the entire region at the same time that it is expected to almost double in population. In conclusion, I posit that these cities have overshot their natural resource base and represent a new form of modern risk due to their size and reliance on resources that may not exist in the future. I then contend that a new approach to urban ecology is needed to account for the complexity of the interlocking human and natural systems upon which these arid cities – holding tens of millions of people with billions of dollars in built infrastructure – have come to depend, as well as others like them in the future and around the world.
Edward Crenshaw (Committee Chair)
Hollie Nyseth-Brehm (Committee Member)
Christopher Otter (Committee Member)
232 p.
Environmental Studies; Sociology
environmental sociology; urban sociology; socio-ecological resilience; socio-ecological fragility; urban ecology; water; American West; human ecology; coupled human natural systems; urban political ecology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Scarrow, R. M. (2016). Hothouse Flowers: Water, the West, and a New Approach to Urban Ecology [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471483922

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Scarrow, Ryan. Hothouse Flowers: Water, the West, and a New Approach to Urban Ecology. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471483922.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Scarrow, Ryan. "Hothouse Flowers: Water, the West, and a New Approach to Urban Ecology." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471483922

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1471483922
902
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.