He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water
www.nytimes.com
A landscape architect in China has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change.

Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing water, Mr. Yu wants to dissipate the destructive force of floodwaters by slowing them and giving them room to spread out.

Mr. Yu calls the concept “sponge city” and says it’s like “doing tai chi with water,” a reference to the Chinese martial art in which an opponent’s energy and moves are redirected, not resisted.

    • @silence7OPM
      8•2 months ago

      Levees, but further back from the rivers, rather than trying to push everything into a narrow and fast channel.

    • Sonori
      1•2 months ago

      Not really, dikes, pumping stations, and canals are more of ways to drain and remove marsh than ways to get water out of the city and to the resivor, ocean, or pumping station.