Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from “The Value of Hawai’i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions.”

Urbanism, or the way of living in urban areas, is like a foul word in Hawaii.

Historically, urbanization, or the growth and development of urban areas, has caused many of our problems. Our dependence on imported toxic energy and industrialized food resources, the contamination of our streams and beaches, and overall environmental degradation can be linked in some way to the process of Hawaii becoming an urban place.

Yet, with 92 percent of Hawaii’s total population currently living in an urban area, urbanism is an unavoidable part of our future. How, then, can we protect our jeopardized environment and unique island lifestyle in an urbanized world? What if we redefine urbanism as island living, in a way that is specific to Hawaii’s history, culture, and ecology?

PF Bentley/Civil Beat

Traditionally, Hawaiians were an urban civilization.

By “urbanism,” I mean a way of life organized around a physical infrastructure engineered to transport resources, a political structure that manages it, and a concentrated population generating and consuming resources within a density of mixed land-uses that correspond to economic functions. Hawaiians had all of these aspects of an urban system. Their urbanism just looked different because it was unique to the environment of an island. The catalyst for traditional urbanization was the invention of a large-scale infrastructure that distributed freshwater. Over time, this system became ingrained in the natural hydrology, and transformed the watershed into a tool to intensify the production of food and other resources. The land was organized into a hierarchy of political land-use districts that linked government and economy to the unique geology and ecology of each watershed. The most well known of these land-use districts was the ahupuaa. Areas with more freshwater were made smaller, while areas with less water were made larger.

The fragmentation of the watershed is a major, but often overlooked, contributing factor to our current environmental crisis. Growing up, all I knew about watersheds was that the stream near my house in Kaneohe was a tunnel that went to the sewage plant. At my Filipino grandma’s house in Kalihi, the stream was down the hill at the end of the street, but too dirty to swim in so I never went. As I learned more about the watershed and its streams — natural, channelized, or hidden away — I realized how little a presence they had in the places I lived growing up.

Over the past two centuries, the relationship between urbanism and the watershed has changed drastically. Urbanism in Hawaii today is organized around multiple economic, political, and social processes that fragment the connection between mountain and ocean, threatening the watershed as a healthy productive system.

The current fragmentation of the watershed can easily be observed in relation to our infrastructure, zoning, and voting districts: The re-engineering of stream beds into concrete channels disrupts the natural hydrology of the watershed and its ability to filter and retain fresh rainwater. Without rain, the flat surface of the channel spreads water into a thin veneer, becoming too hot in the sun to sustain wildlife. When there is rain, the flat surface causes a dangerous surge of water that carries harmful effluents into the ocean.

The size and functions of contemporary land-use districts are based on arbitrary economic functions rather than the vegetation, rainfall, weather patterns, and soil types of each watershed. Typically, only mountain areas are zoned for conservation while the rest of the land areas are zoned for urban and agriculture developments. The lack of conservation areas along streams makes it impossible to maintain the stream as the most important ecological link between mountain and ocean. In urban areas, the overdevelopment of the stream area prevents access to the stream as a public natural resource. The physical separation of urban and agriculture zones separates where people live and grow food, eroding cultural relationships with aina.

The size and boundaries of Hawaii’s political districts are based on population demographics rather than the geological features and ecological capacities of each watershed. This disconnects the leadership and their constituents from the capacities of their respected watersheds. Typically, the different jurisdictions of our local government bodies do not align, creating unnecessary complications and inefficiencies in the political system.

What kind of physical changes to our current built-environment would be necessary to make Hawaii more sustainable over the next hundred years?

Some general starting points:

Public reclamation of the properties along the stream edge over the course of several generations.

The urbanized land along streams should, over time, be returned to the watershed as a publicly accessible resource, maintained as something of a public land trust. These spaces would also serve as ecological corridors to maintain the health of the watershed, adapt to fluctuations in water cycles, provide recreational and educational access to the stream, mountains, and ocean, and reintroduce space for traditional food and cultural production.

Reinterpret city blocks as units that should be able to generate, process, reuse, and manage shared resources, with building heights and densities that correspond to the natural geology and proximity to the stream, forests, and shoreline. Require city blocks to have access to common farming areas, which would promote integrated urban and agriculture land uses within every neighborhood.

Create interdependent relationships between areas within watersheds.

For example, create systems where houses in the valley would harvest more rainwater, and houses along the shore would generate more electricity. That would create an additional economic flow of resources (in addition to water) that would make the continuity of the watershed more relevant to the political economy.

If you would like to discuss the issue of streams in the redevelopment of Kakaako — and whether they can dramatically transform the way we live in urban spaces — you can join Sean Connelly, who will be at a film screening virtual tour and panel on Aug. 21, 2014 from 6:30 p.m. – 9 p.m.

The event will take place at: Kaka‘ako Agora, 441 Cooke Street, between Auahi and Pohukaina

There will be a brief introduction of Hawaii’s displaced freshwater network, including a virtual tour of the stream flowing underneath Kakaako, followed by a screening of Caroline Bâcle’s Lost Rivers at Kakaako Agora. The event will conclude with the panel discussion of the history and future of streams.

For more information: 88blockwalks.com