Can the might of the Chinese government overcome complex needs and investor disinterest to deliver an ambitious program to save the nation’s 450 million urban inhabitants from floods?
Flooding causes more economic, social and humanitarian damage than any other natural disaster and has affected 2.3 billion people over the past 20 years, according to research from the Global Resilience Partnership. China has been particularly affected.
This year saw the worst floods in the nation since 1998. In July, 150 people were killed in central and northern China after intense rainfall.
Illustration: Mountain People
“In China the climate is bringing more rain in summer. From June to September there will be high-density rainfall, which is bringing up urban planning problems,” says Michael Zhao, an associate and expert in water management in the Shanghai office of global urban designers Arup.
“There has already been very serious flooding for four or five years each summer. You will see flooding in more and more cities. As urbanization brings more people to those cities the problem becomes worse and worse,” he said.
In December 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) announced a national plan to combat flooding in the cities — inhabited by 450 million people.
“He said that during the upgrade of urban drainage infrastructure they should make it a priority to retain valuable water resources and to utilize the natural system to achieve drainage, to establish natural retention, natural infiltration and natural purification — like a sponge city,” Zhao said.
Initially 16 cities were selected as pilots for China’s “sponge cities” program, but eventually it will be rolled out nationally. Designers will concede to the wisdom of nature to ensure water is absorbed when there is an excess: Instead of water-resistant concrete, permeable materials and green spaces will be used to soak up rainfall, and rivers and streams will be interconnected so that water can flow away from flooded areas.
The ambitious project is being funded by the central government (15 to 20 percent), local governments and the private sector. The central government is giving each city 400 million yuan (US$60 million) a year for the first three years. In return, 20 percent of the chosen cities must be constructed to a sponge city standard by 2020 and 80 percent by 2030. All of the pilot cities need to have completed the pilot area construction by next year.
The sponge city program takes inspiration from low-impact development in the US, water-sensitive urban design in Australia and sustainable drainage systems in the UK.
However, nothing at this scale has ever been attempted before.
“The sponge city program is more comprehensive and ambitious,” says Ha Wenmei (哈文梅), head of the China water management team at Arcadis, an international urban consultancy firm that was appointed to this plan by the government.
Arcadis is working on a sponge city project in Wuhan, a city of 10 million people in Hubei Province. The city is in dire need of efforts to counter the risk of flooding — in July, metro stations, roads and the soccer stadium were all under water.
“Generally, this program involves water governance, financing structures and technical measures,” Ha said. “With regard to the technical aspects, an integrated urban water system would be built, which incorporates low-impact development measures, upgrades the traditional urban drainage system and provides solutions for excessive run-off discharge. These three measures together make up a sponge city storm-water system.”
The sponge cities program is not just designed to tackle flooding, but also to offer a solution to water shortages. China has much less freshwater per capita than most countries, many sources of which are polluted. Arup is working on a sponge city master plan in Baotou in inner Mongolia.
“Water shortage is seriously heightened there,” Zhao said. “Urbanization is quite limited by the shortage of water.”
The plan looks at how to retain rainwater and keep it inside the catchment.
Although flooding is not a problem in Baotou now, urbanization is happening rapidly and “we can foresee [that] if it continues in the conventional way, urban flooding will heighten in the next five years,” he added.
It is two years since the sponge cities program began, but Ha said it is still too early to tell if it will be successful.
The program is facing great challenges due to “the ever increasing urban population,” he said. “One of the biggest takeaways for urban planners and policymakers in other countries would be how to overcome those challenges and integrate a climate resilient system into urban planning.”
Zhao agreed that the program is “very challenging.”
“From our experience working with pilot cities governments and local design institutes, there are both technical and management issues, depending on how the local pilot cities manage those challenges; some cities move faster, some comparably slow,” he said.
The technical challenges are making sure that the master plans accurately consider the local hydrology and climate, Zhao added.
Moreover, there are challenges around financing the project by public private partnership investment, due to the need to identify the returns for all parties.
“Because it is difficult to measure the service, it is difficult to set up a healthy financial model,” Zhao said. “The rainwater treatment facilities owners [for example] don’t normally benefit [financially].”
However, he said that once a successful public private partnership agreement is decided upon, that can be used in other cities.
The Economist recently reported that investors are “not interested” in the sponge city program, indicating a slowdown of the Chinese economy in general. However, if the majority of China’s densely populated cities are submerged every summer, the economy and the residents will suffer even more.
Still, Zhao sees the sponge cities program as “a very positive change.”
“Previously in the past 30 years people just followed conventional national standards... We are shifting to a sustainable way to manage water issues in cities. It is a good sign,” he said.
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