How can we design flood-resistant cities?

From rising sea ranges in Mumbai to insufferable warmth in Houston, cities world wide are feeling the results of local weather change. Sadly, they don’t all the time have the proper infrastructure to deal with its impacts — which is one motive why cities are starting to reimagine city design.

Dozens of city areas are experimenting with “spongey” infrastructure as a potential solution. It goes by totally different names world wide, however all of them observe a similar design philosophy: take away present pipes and drains to handle rain and stormwater, and implement pure infrastructure like rain gardens and vegetation to soak up water as an alternative. The outcome? Lush, inexperienced, rainforests in opposition to the backdrop of dense city areas. These designs usually are not solely nice for managing urban flooding, however in addition they help biodiversity — which is one among our strongest instruments within the fight against climate change.

Within the video above, we check out sponge metropolis designs world wide and clarify how they work. Plus, city wildlife ecology and conservation researcher Charlie Nilon explains why biodiversity is important to city areas, and the way pure infrastructure initiatives, like sponge cities, will help make our concrete jungles wealthy with plant and animal species.

This episode is introduced by Delta. Delta doesn’t have a say in our editorial choices, however they make movies like this potential. For extra info, go to www.delta.com/sustainability.

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