The role of business
How can companies integrate sponge city designs into their work and what can be done to encourage this?
Several solutions should be brought into play in a Sponge city.. All should focus on saving ressources as energy and water..
Grundfos adds these values into all solutions.. here is an example:
With a systematic approach to a well field at the largest water utility in the Netherladns, Vitens, more than 20 % of the energy consumption was saved in a 7 well area near Loosdrecht..
http://www.grundfos.com/cases/find-case/grundfos-and-vitens-come-together-to-find-new-energy-savings-underground.html
It’s all about access to information:
First business needs access to good decision-making information. Not all sites are created equal in terms of their ‘sponge’ potentials and pitfalls. There is no one-size fits all approach within a particular city or watershed.
Business will be more effective, and incentivized to act, when they have access to the information they need. Decision-making tools need to integrate hyper-local, place-specific data and provide business clients with specific, scenario-based answers for the costs and benefits of acting and not acting (including valuing ecosystem services).
To date, there is insufficient data-richness—lack of access to high-resolution data—for businesses to make smart, fast decisions in the public interest. The science (and related urban policy) is too generalized, not taking into account particulars of place; There is also insufficient understanding of costs/benefits.
These challenges drive our work at ALI, in collaboration with architecture, engineering, and green infrastructure firms and agencies.
Matt Rose says businesses need to track their water use:
For businesses, you can't manage what you don't measure. 99% of US business building use their water bill to determine waste that occurred over a month ago. Tracking consumption in real-time can catch mechanical and operational waste when it starts - we finding 20% savings on average with businesses that closely track their water consumption.
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The biggest obstacles to water-resilient design
Reader Anna Lo Jacomo asks: what is the biggest obstacle to building water-resilient cities?
I guess the greatest obstacle is the political will to act. It's not a technical problem...
Businesses need to be empowered to act:
Although LA and dry western cities like it are developing plans to harvest stormwater through re-tooled large-scale infrastructures on publicly owned lands, one large unanswered question is: how do you empower the private sector—from corporate citizens to individual families and neighborhoods—to participate actively in optimizing the surface of the city?
Businesses and property owners need to know, what’s the right move for harvesting, conserving and reusing water on my particular site? Some building sites are good for harvesting stormwater for aquifer recharge; others are better for on-site treatment and retention. Public investement is important, but won't be enough. Cities need to make it easy for the private sector to do the right thing in the collective interest.
That’s what we are investing in. We develop digital tools that make complex, interrelated data on the health of a watershed as a whole precise and actionable at the scale of individual businesses and property parcels.
We want individual businesses, including real estate developers and home builders, to have rapid access to answering the question, “What’s the right water strategy for my site?”
Old infrastructure not suitable for the “new” rainfall, says Christian Shou:
I think the really big challange is that infrastructure is already built to deal with the "old Rainfall".. and only the damages in the future will pay the solution...
So planning the future must not only solve problems, but there should be developed an additional value in raised living quality in the city with the SPonge solution...
The City of Viborg in DK has made an example of this. Here, a rain storing facility is turned into a recreational area for the city people... It is called Sønæs (for google ;o)
Maybe we need to think about where we treat wastewater:
I'm hearing discussions on water reuse(post treatment) strategy and infrastructure: For more efficient distribution of treated water for reuse, does it make more sense to treat wastewater locally/regionally versus treatment at a centralized plant?
Stop thinking about piecemeal solutions, says Arjen Hoekstra, it’s time to think structurally:
I like the way Rotterdam (Netherlands) is profiling itself as climate-proof city, see http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rotterdam-flood-proof-climate-change. On the other hand, it all remains rather a collection of a couple of nice initiatives, with green rooftops, floating houses. At large, nothing is so much more "climate-proof" as in the past.
If we really want to change cities to more resilient communities, a lot needs to happen structurally. We'll not come there by here and there a good initiative - a few green rooftops - some permeable roads - some reedbeds for wastewater treatment - a multifunctional park with artwork and water storage capacity etc. What we need is the incorporation of climate-neutral design throughout the city - also in existing parts of the city, not just in new buildings. And we need water storage capacity at large scale. Green rooftops should compete with solar panel systems. We should get rid of the urban heat island effect by green city design.
Hadley Arnold believes there’s too much short-termism when it comes to understanding costs and benefits:
Just want to add what I see as another barrier:
—insufficient understanding of costs/benefits of adopting good "sponge" strategies.
When the UK commissioned the Stern Report (2008) on the economics of climate change, it clearly showed that short-term costs will be greatly outweighed by long-term stagnation; i.e., longterm costs of not acting are much greater than short-term costs of acting. This is perhaps still alien to the majority of voters, lenders, and investors.
We need tools that actively build scenarios that allow builders, policy makers, planners to evaluate costs----costs of action, and costs of inaction.
Not one but many barriers:
I don't think there is one main barrier the world over. In some cities (particularly high density developing cities with poor land law enforcement) the issue is space, in others it is political will or justifying the business case (which is why more cities are moving to mandating stormwater retention on private properties), but can also be resistance to part with the beloved car-oriented paved surfaces, or even just knowledge about groundsoils and groundwater table necessary to make effective sponge-like interventions.
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Sponge cities' role in water security
How and where are sponge cities improving water security?
In the US west, “spongification” moves cities off dependence on carbon- and energy-intensive water imports. Its the major task facing US western cities, and its a work in progress. Its a huge re-design of business-as-usual.
35 million people in the US West depend on gas, coal, and oil to pump dwindling snowpack across desert and mountains to urban centers. At the same time, we shed most local rain to storm drains and the sea as waste.
Its an untenable proposition: using carbon-intensive fuels to warm the atmosphere only contributes to worsening climate impacts: less snowpack, earlier snowmelt, longer droughts, and more intensive, if infrequent, rain events. The task is to capture hard-to-manage stormwater to build local reserves, enough to get us through historic droughts like the one we are in.
Acc. to Dr. Robert Wilkinson (UCSB)’s calculations: conservation, recycling, and stormwater harvest, combined, could offset Los Angeles’s dependence on fragile supplies of imported snowmelt by as much as 82%. Half of that local supply would come from harvesting stormwater.
Our water resources are limited in many areas of the world both due to climate and urbanisation and also in many places increased water usage for agriculture. Hence, using the water resources the optimal way is crucial as well as recharging the water resources. The concept of sponge city is an interesting way of recharging water resources and it also create a good way of introducing more water bodies into the landscape. An example of the concept can be seen in Singapore, where they have worked a lot on water as a scarse resource and meanwhile having floodin problems: https://www.nparks.gov.sg/gardens-parks-and-nature/parks-and-nature-reserves/bishan---ang-mo-kio-park
Arjen Hoekstra suggests that the term “sponge cities” may be misleading; we need to rethink city design:
Sponge city - future-proof city - climate-proof city - whatever term is used, the key is that we need to rethink city design, not only for water security, but food and energy security as well. These issues are linked. I don't know any real sponge cities, only nice stories about good initiatives.
I like the NEWater initiative in Singapore, which I could visit some time ago. They treat municipal wastewater and put it back into the drinking water supply system. Unique... a great example of recycling. See http://www.pub.gov.sg/water/newater/Pages/default.aspx
It’s all about saving water, says Christian Shou:
Today, a Chinese delegation from Chinese Minestry is visiting the Danish Natur Agency. Quote from this morning in a session with Liu Zhiguan, Chinese Ministery of Water Ressources
“Water Savings is the most important aspect of Sponge Cities”
I think this is a very interesting statement, as the really focus is about water scarcity issues in a megacity!
Mandy Ikert has worked with mega-cities trying to manage excess water:
We just returned from convening of the Connecting Delta Cities network -a group of 12 of the world's megacities and innovator cities all facing climate change adaptation in a coastal river delta environment -as you can imagine excess water management is a challenge for them all. We saw river and reservoir revitalization in Jakarta and learned about community scale efforts like "biopore" to allow for household scale stormwater management and groundwater recharge. In Singapore, their 4 national taps program to ensure water security entails also capturing river and stormwater and treating them as freshwater sources for the otherwise water-strapped island nation.
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Panel guests
Arjen Hoekstra, professor in water management, University of Twente
Mandy Ikert, head of the adaptation and water initiative, C40 Cities
Søren Hvilshøj, global market director: water, Ramboll
Katherine Hyde, lecturer in environmental sustainability, University of Reading
Christian Schou, application manager, Grundfos Global Water Utility Segment, Grundfos
Hadley Arnold, executive director, Arid Lands Institute
Matt Rose, CEO, Apana
What we'll be discussing - and leave your question
One in four major cities is struggling to provide clean water to residents. In Perth, for example, the city’s dams received just 72.4bn litres of water in 2014 – a far cry from the 300bn demanded by its two million-strong population.
There is a growing interest in the concept of sponge cities as a way to address such water insecurity. These cities are designed using everything from green roofs and rainwater harvesting to permeable road surfaces to keep water in rather than send it away.
China, for example, has recently selected 16 urban districts to become pilot sponge cities, each receiving up to 600m yuan (£62m) to develop urban infrastructure that will help the country address both water scarcity and flooding.
The private sector is a critical component in the sponge city conversation. Businesses both rely on functioning cities that are adequately prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change, such as increasingly erratic rainfall, and can provide a crucial funding stream for urban infrastructure.
Join the discussion
Join a panel of experts on Monday 26 October between 1-2pm GMT to discuss sponge cities and business. Questions we will explore include:
- how and where are sponge cities improving water security?
- how can companies integrate sponge city design into their work?
- how else can business help in the development of sponge cities?
- what are the barriers to developing sponge cities?
- how can sponge cities address other urban demands, such as for energy?
- beyond sponge city designs, how else can urban water shortages be addressed?
How to join
Make sure you’re a registered user of the Guardian and join us in the comments section below.
Submit a question
You can submit questions for the panel in advance using the form below or tweeting them to @GuardianSustBiz using #askGSB.
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Municipalities should take the lead. Water, space, both are primarily public goods. Governments should think about how to create the best enabling environment for innovation in the right direction, creating opportunities for business but for local community initiatives and art, design and creative initiatives as well. The future city is not a matter of building structures, it's about building communities. Leading themes could be: creating a circular economy, energy self-sufficiency, climate neutrality, zero-fuel-100% electrified transport, closed municipal water cycle.