Can bringing back nature save our cities from floods?

Engineers across the globe, from China to East Africa and the US,
are turning to a new, nature-based solutions to fight floods,
which are becoming more likely in many places because of climate
change. They’re taking a pickaxe to asphalt and concrete and
instead are restoring wetlands, parks and riverbanks, turning our
metropolises into so-called ‘sponge cities’. Plants, trees and
lakes act just like a sponge, mopping up rainwater instead of
letting it pool and eventually flood our homes.


Professor Priti Parikh tells Jordan Dunbar how these spongey
solutions have many benefits beyond flooding, encouraging
biodiversity, helping our mental health and storing the planet
warming gas, carbon dioxide. The BBC’s China Correspondent, Laura
Bicker, meets the man who came up with the concept, Professor
Kongjian Yu, and visits Zhengzhou, a sponge city in the making.
And Katya Reyna tells Jordan how her NGO is helping low-income
communities in Portland in the US to ‘depave’ disused car parks,
turning them into plant-oases.


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Contributors: Priti Parikh, Professor of Infrastructure
Engineering and International Development, University College
London and a Trustee at the Institution of Civil Engineers Laura
Bicker, BBC China Correspondent Professor Kongjian Yu, Professor
of Landscape Architecture at Peking University in Beijing Katya
Reyna, Co-Director of Depave, in Portland, USA


Producers: Graihagh Jackson, Ben Cooper and Joyce Liu Mixing: Tom
Brignell and Andy Fell Editor: Simon Watts