We don’t need to put up with an overworked drainage system in our towns and cities.

Futures Forum: Climate change: calling for a new approach to ensure communities are resilient to the threat of flooding > “We can’t win a war against water by building away climate change with infinitely high flood defences.”

How’s about some green infrastructure for the Sid Valley? Could Sidmouth become a ‘sponge town’?

The idea is very solarpunk: using current technology with minimum environmental impact:

Sponge cities: a solarpunk future by 2030

Cities turning themselves into sponges? See how cities like Berlin are leading the trend.

What happens when a city experiences a lot of rain? Instead of seeping into the ground as it would in a forest or grassland, all the water has nowhere to go. After a large storm that disrupts a city’s drainage system, the precipitation ends up floating, often causing destructive flooding. 

But what if we could build stunning cities that act like sponges and save thousands of lives along the way? Well, Germany and China are already underway in creating those systems. 

These systems are known as Sponge cities. Sponge cities use green architecture solutions designed to soak up excess water, just like a sponge. Sponge cities are made up of absorbent pavement and roads, large green spaces filled with interconnected waterways, and areas that act like parks when dry but wetlands when water needs a little extra space.

Sponge cities: A solarpunk future by 2030

Sponge cities: a solarpunk future by 2030 | Future Explored by Freethink – YouTube