On the Road to Hāna: Wealth, Water, & the Land that Feeds
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davis-hanamei-march-arch-2026-thesis.pdf
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459.94 MB
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Author(s)
Davis, Hana Meihan
Advisor(s)
Ghosn, Rania
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Lurking in the background of Maui’s beautiful hills is a fierce and centuries-long fight over water, where first sugar plantation owners, and now developers, have been pitted against Native Hawaiians. Though local communities have secured some victories protecting their use of water, their opponents have long dominated the political landscape, appropriating water for economic gains and bending Hawaii’s water law toward their interests. Water—as the cultural heritage of Hawaii, as the system that once brought life and now fuels injustice—sits at the heart of this thesis.
The lush slopes of the Haleakalā volcano are home to the East Maui Irrigation (EMI) System, Hawai’i’s most dramatic source of surface water and the largest privately financed irrigation system in the U.S. With 74 miles of infrastructure that moved, at its height, 165 million gallons per day, EMI draws water from the wet, windward slopes of East Maui to the flat, dry central valley—home to Alexander & Baldwin’s Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company from the 1870s until it closed in 2016. The water diverted from East Maui allowed the plantation to flourish, at one point becoming the largest sugar plantation in the U.S. However, the diversion left East Maui in crisis, with streams running dry even as efforts continue to restore their natural flow. Today, tourism has replaced sugar as both the island’s primary economic driver and major source of extraction.
Running parallel to this ecosystem is the Road to Hāna. This highway is the site of my thesis: Along it, I propose nine interventions that reimagine the Road as an infrastructure of care. The sites and programs each represent different aspects of East Maui’s landscape and history—with each addressing the recovery of water or encouraging authorship over local economies in a different way. Together, they are an example for how a constellation of small, scalable, actions might collectively shift the narrative from extraction and export to rehabilitation and community stewardship. While it does not undo centuries of harm to Hawai’i, this vision turns the Road to Hāna into the spine of a living classroom, a healing watershed, and a platform for self-determination—bringing Maui closer to the historic promise of the ahupua’a.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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