From rising sea ranges in Mumbai to insufferable warmth in Houston, cities around the globe are feeling the consequences of local weather change. Sadly, they don’t at all times have the correct infrastructure to deal with its impacts — which is one purpose why cities are starting to reimagine city design.
Dozens of city areas are experimenting with “spongey” infrastructure as a potential answer. It goes by totally different names around the globe, however all of them comply with an identical design philosophy: take away current 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 consequence? Lush, inexperienced, rainforests towards the backdrop of dense city areas. These designs usually are not solely nice for managing city flooding, however additionally they help biodiversity — which is one in every of our strongest instruments within the combat towards local weather change.
Within the video above, we check out sponge metropolis designs around the globe 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 tasks, like sponge cities, can assist make our concrete jungles wealthy with plant and animal species.
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