From rising sea ranges in Mumbai to insufferable warmth in Houston, cities all over the world are feeling the results of local weather change. Sadly, they don’t all the time have the precise 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 resolution. It goes by completely different names all over the world, however all of them observe an analogous 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 a substitute. The outcome? Lush, inexperienced, rainforests in opposition to the backdrop of dense city areas. These designs are usually not solely nice for managing city flooding, however additionally they help biodiversity — which is one in every of our strongest instruments within the battle in opposition to local weather change.
Within the video above, we check out sponge metropolis designs all over the world and clarify how they work. Plus, city wildlife ecology and conservation researcher Charlie Nilon explains why biodiversity is crucial to city areas, and the way pure infrastructure initiatives, like sponge cities, can assist make our concrete jungles wealthy with plant and animal species.
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