The Nine Nations of North America...

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WHITE DEVIL

Sicc OG
#1
Dec 25, 2003
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#1
I just finished this book. Interesting read. Where y'all from? Do you think you conform to these borders? (Click on region name for explanation and definition)...

If there was a civil war, what side would you be on?
Nine Nations of North America




  • an expanded New England, also called New Britain or Atlantica, and sometimes jokingly Atlantis, including not only Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut (although omitting the Connecticut suburbs of New York City), but also the Canadian Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland;

  • The Breadbasket, consisting of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, western Missouri, parts of Illinois and Indiana, and northern Texas as well as some of 'near-North' Ontario, and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada, with its "capital" as Kansas City, Missouri;



  • The Islands, the Caribbean islands, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale portion of southern Florida, and parts of Venezuela;



  • The Empty Quarter - most of Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Denver, Colorado as well as the eastern portions of Oregon, California, Washington, all of Alberta and Northern Canada, and British Columbia east of the Coast Ranges.
 
W

WHITE DEVIL

Sicc OG
#5
Dec 25, 2003
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The implication of these developments, Garreau argues, is that everything from politics to urban planning needs to be redesigned to match the evolving regional sensibilities that now matter more to people than national and international borders. In the Ecotopia, for instance, residents prize the natural environment and specialize in environmentally friendly high-technology industries like software, and consider those who do not share their values as 'foreigners'. Meanwhile, communities in the Empty Quarter are organized around extraction of natural resources such as the oil and timber that are their economic mainstay. Such regional differences, Garreau suggests, result in fundamental differences in worldviews that are pulling each of the nine nations apart. This evocative thesis has been controversial since the book was first published, but even critics concede that in the ensuing years developments in national and international politics, including the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, have made Garreau's views seem especially prescient.

The theory of bioregional democracy and urban secession owe much to his analysis, as does the theory of free trade. Today, in 2003, even critics concede that intervening developments in national and international politics, including the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, have made Garreau's views more respectable - even mainstream. A few would argue that Seattle for instance has replaced San Francisco as the Ecotopia center, but, few would say that these regions no longer exist.

A major impact of Garreau's work has been at the municipal level, as certain cities have realized they are drastically more important under Garreau's scenario than they are accorded in present politics. For instance, Austin, Texas is at the corner of three of the Nine Nations of North America, Chicago, Illinois brokers Breadbasket food into The Foundry region to feed industrial workers, and San Francisco (or Seattle) leads a Pacific Rim region with an economy the size of Japan.

A parallel impact has been to cast doubt on the role of American state and Canadian provincial governments, especially vis a vis these keystone cities. Texas and Ontario share the distinction that Garreau's analysis divides their territory among three nations each. As the 20th century ended with these two jurisdictions ranked as the two worst polluters in North America, some suggested strongly that their state and provincial authority needed to be eradicated, as it was being abused to simply cover up polluters' activities. An alternative view is that the cultural differences between these three regions make the state/provincial government a forum for factional differences between societies, where ecology necessarily takes a back-seat, and pollution increases then as a side-effect.

Those that unite such fractious states seem to be believed to have special power to unite the federal governments as well: G. W. Bush was the sitting Governor of Texas, and that former Ontario Premier Michael Harris was and is a commonly-named candidate to "unite the right." Others believe that regional differences are themselves responsible for such figures rising to power at all, e.g. Green Party of the United States strength in Ecotopia and New England and especially Florida which many blame for helping to elect Bush.


The Empty Quarter

  • Where?
  • Capital: Denver
  • Symbol: mining crane / steam shovel
  • Keyword: resources or distance
  • Pop. culture:
  • Great distances
  • A harsh land: "you conquer it, or it conquers you"
  • Source of raw materials for the other nations of North America:
  • Decisions made outside of the nation
  • Sparsely populated
The Empty Quarter: This region is seen as empty because comparatively it is. Some areas have little population because of mountains or cold environments. It is a resource provider to the nation, and suffers from a sense of damage because of the exploitive nature of those resource taking activities.

"When people talk about the "West" these days, they aren't really talking about the West [everything to the left of the 100th meridian]. They're talking about The Empty Quarter." Climate (dry - average rainfall below 20 inches), geography (high - above two thousand feet in elevation, "big sky" country where the stars do seem closer), and "a repository of values, ideas, memories, and vistas that date back to the frontier" - these are what define The Empty Quarter.
This "empty" region is actually full of untapped resource wealth. In North America, "known recoverable reserves of coal and oil shale... are capable of providing synthetic fuels equivalent to one trillion barrels of oil... it's enough to sustain a synthetic fuels industry producing 15 million barrels of oil a day for 175 years... almost 80 percent would have to come out of the nation of the Empty Quarter". For example, Montana has three times the proven coal reserves of West Virginia and Wyoming. "Trapped in the Athabasca tar sands of Alberta alone, there is more oil than in the entire Persian Gulf." "There is a portion of Saudia Arabia, dry and unpopulated, whose energy resources are dwarfed by those of North America's Intermountain West. In Arabic, it is called Rub 'al Khali: The Empty Quarter" - hence the name Garreau gives to this region.

There are costs associated with tapping into this wealth, both social and environmental. At the time of writing, Garreau is describing a region weighing up the pros and cons, coming to terms with the task of determining future directions. There are forced choices between agriculture, industrialization, urbanization, and wilderness, and the process is being impacted by the dreams and values of those outside the region.

Towns like Billings in Montana, are "now important as staging areas for the assault on energy and mineral wealth". If they are not prepared for the problems of growth, they will bloom with "a boutique of modern urban pathologies" such as crime, violence, and family dysfunction. For example, Garreau renders an image of "women stuck, day in day out, in mobile homes literally forty miles from nowhere, with zero to do except watch men poke holes in the ground. They go crazy."

The resource development schemes consume a lot of water and produce a lot of hazardous waste. In this dry region water can be more valuable to a farmer as rights sold to mining companies, than used to raise stock. That's a choice about lifestyle. There are specters of trillion-ton mountains of oil-shale tailings producing choking dust and leaching poisonous minerals, and of coal tar, "one of the most potent cancer-causing substances known to man". All this being created in a region that is also "is the site of some of the continent's most spectacular and precious vistas...and the only major stretches of wilderness left". It is a region viewed elsewhere on the continent as representing "a freedom that is meaningful only when compared to the confines of the city." There is "political content" to having thousands who want "the option to escape the rat race" to continue to exist, and a practical content as seen the growth of towns like Boise in Idaho. There are controversial choices between preservation and development to be made.

This decision-making process is not just in the hands of the "blue-eyed Arabs". Indian tribes, including the Blackfoot and Spokane control at least a hundred year's supply of low-sulfur, strippable coal. (That translates as good quality, easy-to-get-at coal.) They formed an organization called the Council of Energy Resource Tribes. What's more, on the U.S. side of the region, a vast portion of the land is controlled by the federal government. In fact, the eastern boundary of The Empty Quarter indicates "where federal control over the land becomes dominant... west of this line, it's national parks, national monuments, national forests, national wildlife refuges... in the federal district - the District of Columbia - the government controls far less land, in percentage terms, than it does west of The Empty Quarter line." The decisions of bureaucrats in Washington D.C. have far more weight than the opinions of local, elected officials, and they often come down on the side of land preservation. This is "a condition that has triggered the "Sagebrush Rebellion", as the drive to gain more local control of this region's future is called." For "Unlike Ecotopia, development is a religion in The Empty Quarter which has done with so little for so long". As one who has seen the kind of environment produced by industrialization, Garreau "couldn't get over the enthusiasm I met in this, the land of the proverbial wide-open spaces, for coal mines and steel mills and boom towns."
 
W

WHITE DEVIL

Sicc OG
#6
Dec 25, 2003
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#6
The Islands


  • Where?
  • Capital: Miami
  • Symbol: palm tree or money
  • Keyword: drugs
  • Pop. culture: Miami Vice, Jimmy Buffet, Golden girls
MexAmerica


  • Where?
  • Capital: Los Angeles
  • Symbol: cowboy boot
  • Keyword: economic boom
  • Pop. culture: movie: El Norte

Ecotopia


  • Where?
  • Capital: San Francisco
  • Symbol: tree
  • Keyword: water
  • Pop. culture: Movie: Citizen Cane
From Northern California to Alaska, Ecotopia (from the words ECOlogy and uTOPIA) comprises the northern west coast of North America. Its a land where individualism and the environment are respected (Garreau says "worshipped"). It is the home of the Posse Comitatus right-wing militia, and radical environmentalists who pound spikes into trees to stop the lumberman's saw. but it is also the home of Boeing Arilines, Microsoft , and Silicon Valley.

Garreau says that Ecotopia is surrounded by hostile forces. To the south, dry Mexamerica has their eyes on ecotopia's water [napreces], but the Ecotopians defend their water fiercely.

Ecotopia's individualism is expressed in a form of xenophilia (the love of things strange and foreign). It's educational center, UC Berkely, is known for being at the center of the '60s generation. the home of LSD and the Grateful Dead. silicon valley is jus up the road. Holistic medicine, solar energy, "wierd"?

Ecotopia is a Pacific Rim nation [parim]

Dixie

  • Where?
  • Capital: Atlanta
  • Symbol: confederate flag
  • Keyword: change
  • Pop. culture: Designing Women, Dallas,
For us in Illinois, it is of interest that southern Illionis is part of "Dixie". Stop at a truck stop in Carbondale, Illionois. and you'll see grits and hush puppies on the menu.

It is not surprising that the southern and southeastern region of the United states is a separate cultural nation. The differences between Dixie and the rest of North America are well known and , of course, culminated in the Civil War.

The key word for dixie is "change", although it may be more accurate to say "change, but...". Economically, investment money is flowing into Dixie, BUT its benefits haven't reached most of the southern poor. African americans have been elected as mayors of Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Jacksonville, but racism and the KKK are still strong.

Large black population [usblack]

Poverty: mobile homes: [namohome] [usincome]

Highest homicide / crime rate: [nacrimem] [nacrimev]

New England

  • Where?
  • Capital: Boston
  • Symbol: wood burning stove
  • Keyword:
  • Pop. culture: Cheers
"New England" includes the US states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut and the Canadian Atlantic provinces [nacanpro] of News Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

Except for the urbanized southern portion [namegal], which can also be classified in the Foundry, New England is mostly rural and economic development has lagged behind its neighbors. The primary activities of agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Today recreatin and tourism are growing industries.

New Englanders have a strong sense of history, are self-reliant, and highly educated [usbache].
The Breadbasket


  • Where?
  • Capital: Kansas City
  • Symbol: wheat
  • Keyword: agriculture
  • Pop. culture: The old television show Mary Tyler Moore
Garreau states the "the Breadbasket is the nation that works best". It lies in the flat interior lowland and great plains [naprgl] physiographic regions of North America. In northern Illinois the Breadbasket begins at the Fox river.

The Breadbasket has been called America's "social ratifier": a place where if a new idea is accepted, it is generally considered to be accepted everywhere in the country. President Nixon used to say" Does it play in Preoria?" If accepted in the Breadbasket, it has become a part of our culture.

The Breadbasket is a well educated nation [usbache], due to the establishment of land-grant universities.

The Foundry


  • Where?
  • Capital: Detroit
  • Symbol: factory
  • Keyword: manufacturing
  • Pop. Culture: The old television show Laverne and Shirley, or Roseanne
The Foundry was North America's heavily populated [napopden] manufacturing belt [namanuf]. Stretching from New York City to Milwaukee, Wisconsin [na9foun2]. It includes the Megalopolis [namegal] of the Eastern United States and the "Mainstreet" region of southern Canada.

It is a nation of large industrial cities. But the industrial base of these cities is declining, turning the "manufacturing belt" [namanuf] into a "rust belt". During its heyday the Foundry attracted the disadvantaged from around the world including African Americans from the southern states of Dixie. This influx of people looking for factory jobs has made the Foundry an multiethnic nation [usblack]. But with the decline of manufacturing these multiethnic cities developed cores of urban poor. Furthermore, the pollution created by the massive manufacturing plants still affects these cities. Large areas of urban land is contaminated and lies idle throughout the Foundry.

The Foundry includes Chicago. Some geographers define the Fox River as the Foundry's western border.
 
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