Solarpunk Urbanism

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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

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He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water | A landscape architect in China has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change. (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by mondoman712@lemmy.ml to c/urbanism

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8079352

Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing water, Mr. Yu wants to dissipate the destructive force of floodwaters by slowing them and giving them room to spread out.

Mr. Yu calls the concept “sponge city” and says it’s like “doing tai chi with water,” a reference to the Chinese martial art in which an opponent’s energy and moves are redirected, not resisted.

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[–] LibertyLizard 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

This article is a bit late to the party. This has been an important concept in urban design for a long time now. Even before the sponge city concept was mainstream, people were creating similar projects.

Of course, in most cities they are too scattered to make a big difference. I can think of maybe a half dozen projects in this vein in my city which might take the edge off some local floods but it doesn’t solve the problem. As the article points out, you need to transform the landscape of much of the city to make it effective. In my view this will only be possible by removing significant car infrastructure.

[–] mondoman712@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The article mentions the program was started in China in 2015, and I'm sure it's been done elsewhere earlier. But I don't think it's a problem to keep talking about, since a lot of people won't have heard about it before.

[–] LibertyLizard 7 points 8 months ago

Fair point, I didn’t mean to imply that. You are probably right that it’s new to most people.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

In my view this will only be possible by removing significant car infrastructure.

Throw it on top of the pile of reasons to do that!