Building ‘Sponge Cities’

Writing in WIRED, Matt Simon warns, “Your city was built for a climate of 100, 200, 300 years ago, but that climate no longer exists.”

To that end, cities are finding new (and old) ways to manage and capture stormwater. “The hot new strategy in urban design, which was pioneered in China, is to slow everything down. Since 2013, China has embarked on a national policy to turn its growing metropolises into sponge cities, which capture stormwater instead of disposing of it all.”

WIRED interviewed Kongjian Yu, champion of the concept and founder of the Beijing design firm Turenscape, who says “A sponge city can be on any scale.”

According to Yu, “You have to solve the problem holistically, and the sponge city is a nature-based, holistic solution. It is inexpensive, and it can be done at a small or large scale. You can have your garden, but you also have to plan from the top. It is a sponge planet, it is a sponge countryside, it is a sponge urban district.”

For cities looking to build more resilient green infrastructure, Yu says “ if you come to the green alternative, you will not only save money, but the impact will be more immediate. The sponge city is basically using free nature.”