North America Settlement

When settlement of North America began several hundred years ago, transportation was primitive and essentially limited to horses and sailing ships. Have you ever wondered what North America might be like today if modern transportation technology, such as cars and jumbo jets, had been developed before the settlement of North America? Here is my speculation.

Boston and Philadelphia would be larger cities than New York or Montreal. New York City was built for water. It is located where the Hudson River, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean intersect. While it is an ideal place for ships to load and unload cargo and immigrants and has abundant fresh water available, it's geography is the antithesis of cars.

The city is sliced to pieces by those waterways and also by the East River. Cars are forced to rely on bridges and tunnels to navigate the city. Not only that, the waters strictly limit the city's growth potential. In my scenario, New York City would be an important seaport for cargo but would be nowhere near America's largest city.

Montreal was also in a logical place for a settlement several hundred years ago. Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River but at the place he found a large island in the river, he was blocked from going further by the Lachine Rapids. The island naturally became a settlement and in fact was already an Indian settlement known as Hochelaga. The city's economic engine in the Twentieth Century has been the oil refineries to the east of Montreal where tankers can off-load crude oil.

But once again, we have a city that was made for water but not for cars. Not only is the city sliced up by the two branches of the river, forcing cars onto bridges, but the large modern city had to be built around Mount Royal in the middle of the island.

In my scenario, neither Washington nor Ottawa would be national capitals. Both were built as capitals because at the time, they were centrally located in their respective countries. Since then, both countries have expended dramatically westward and the capital cities are now far to the east of each country's center of population. Advanced transportation would enable the continent to be settled much more quickly and settlements to be much further apart. It is likely that today, Dallas and Winnepeg would be the national capitals.

Los Angeles is the logical place for a seaport. Unfortunately, the prevailing wind is from the west and there are mountains to the east of the city. The result was Los Angeles' legendary smog from car exhaust. Not to mention that it is on an earthquake fault line as is San Francisco. Since we have air conditioning and civil engineers can build canals that can route water hundreds of miles into the desert, Phoenix and Las Vegas will be much bigger cities than Los Angeles or San Fransisco. Room to expand would be a vital consideration in city location.

The map of Mexico, in my scenario, would look pretty much as it does today. With one great exception. Mexico City, now the largest city in the world, is built in a location that was just not intended for a big city. It is on a kind of bowl sorrounded by mountains and is on an old lake bed into which the city and it's tall buildings is gradually sinking. The mountains, of course, trap smoke and auto exhaust in the same way as the mountains to the east of Los Angeles. The city is built where is is because it is the former site of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.