Flooding
Urban flooding happens when rain falls on an impermeable city —roofs, asphalt, concrete— and water that no longer infiltrates runs to the lowest point faster than sewers can swallow it. It worsens with building on watercourses and floodplains and with rainfall intensifying under climate change.
The twentieth-century answer was the pipe: a bigger sewer. The twenty-first is the sponge: floodable parks, permeable paving, rivers freed from their channels. China named its sponge cities in 2014; Copenhagen and Rotterdam have applied the idea for a decade. Valencia 2024 showed the cost of having built over the ravine.
Videos on this term (19)
- Housing
Mike Davis: Risk Is Not Natural but a Construct of Power
Mike Davis argued that urban disasters are built before the emergency through segregation, speculation and unequal…
Mike Davis 3 min read - Climate change
Resilience Is Just a Mask for Resignation
How resilience went from physics and ecology to an urban agenda that asks communities to absorb risks they did not…
3 min read - Urban history
Friedrich Engels and the Industrial City: The Origins of Urban Justice
Engels described in 1845 how Manchester hid its workers and in 1872 why housing cannot be solved by reform. His…
Friedrich Engels 3 min read - Climate change
David Simon and Resilient Cities in the Global South
David Simon studies how Global South cities adapt to climate change with informality and few resources.
David Simon 3 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience: How Cities Recover After Disaster
The Resilient City (2005) by Vale and Campanella explains how Chicago, Warsaw, Hiroshima or New York rebuilt after…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Ian McHarg: Design with Nature
A summary of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature (1969): planning from the territory up, layered maps, and the origin…
2 min read - Climate change
Thomas Campanella: Urban Resilience in Times of Crisis
Thomas Campanella argues that a city's resilience is that of its citizens: New Orleans after Katrina, the green dot…
Thomas Campanella 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Mike Davis: Planet of Slums, Inequality and Megacities
Mike Davis explains in Planet of Slums how the megacities of the Global South grow without jobs or infrastructure,…
Mike Davis 2 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience and Climate Change: Governing Climate with Justice
Urban resilience to climate change is a way of governing, not a technical attribute. What Pauline McGuirk's…
2 min read - Urban history
A City on a Lake by Matthew Vitz: Mexico City and Its Lake
A City on a Lake by Matthew Vitz explains how Mexico City grew on the drained Lake Texcoco and how water, forests…
Matthew Vitz 3 min read - Climate change
Harriet Bulkeley: Urban Climate Governance and Sustainability
Harriet Bulkeley explains how cities govern climate through networks, experiments and partnerships, and why that…
Harriet Bulkeley 2 min read - Urban ecology
Green infrastructure: the city that manages its climate
Parks, green roofs and wetlands are not ornament: they lower temperature, absorb rainfall and replace grey…
2 min read - Climate change
Urban resilience: adaptation and social justice
What urban resilience means for Timothy Beatley and Judith Rodin: adapting to climate, pandemics and disasters…
2 min read - Urban geopolitics
Forced Displacement in the Global South: A Growing Urban Crisis
Forced displacement in Global South cities grows through development, violence and climate. What Mike Davis and…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Liquid Power by Erik Swyngedouw: Water, Power and Modernisation
Liquid Power (2015) by Erik Swyngedouw explains how dams, transfers and irrigation were the instrument of power…
Erik Swyngedouw 3 min read - Climate change
Extreme Cities by Ashley Dawson: Cities, Climate and Inequality
Extreme Cities (2017) by Ashley Dawson explains why coastal cities are climate change's first victim and how…
Ashley Dawson 2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban River Restoration: What It Is and Examples
Urban river restoration reopens channelised rivers to cut flood risk and heat. What Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Water and Power: Urban Water per Swyngedouw, Kaika and Bakker
Water management in cities decides who gets water, at what price and who suffers droughts and floods. What Erik…
3 min read - Climate change
Cities and Climate Change: Mitigation, Adaptation and Examples
Cities emit 70 percent of energy-related CO2 and feel the impacts first. What mitigation and adaptation mean and…
2 min read
