City planners need to design for flooding
It’s not enough to continue to build cities and towns based on business-as-usual planning principles.
Professor Elizabeth Mossop, Dean of the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
The campus of Tulane University in uptown New Orleans has a series of ‘stormwater gardens’ that can filter and store large volumes of water. Spackman Mossop Michaels, Author provided
As the current New South Wales flooding highlights, it’s not enough to continue to build cities and towns based on business-as-usual planning principles — especially as these disasters tend to disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, increasing inequality in Australia.
We need to design our urban spaces around the idea that flooding is inevitable. That means not building on flood plains, and thinking creatively about what can be done to create urban “sinks” to hold water when floods strike.
Examples from overseas show what’s possible when the political will is there.
- Read the full story in The Conversation: Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: city planners need to design for flooding. These examples show the way.
