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\u2019re taking a pickaxe to asphalt and concrete and instead are restoring wetlands, parks and riverbanks, turning our metropolises into so-called \u2018sponge cities\u2019. 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\u2019s 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 \u2018depave\u2019 disused car parks, turning them into plant-oases.
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Contributors:\nPriti Parikh, Professor of Infrastructure Engineering and International Development, University College London and a Trustee at the Institution of Civil Engineers\nLaura Bicker, BBC China Correspondent \nProfessor Kongjian Yu, Professor of Landscape Architecture at Peking University in Beijing \nKatya Reyna, Co-Director of Depave, in Portland, USA
Producers: Graihagh Jackson, Ben Cooper and Joyce Liu \nMixing: Tom Brignell and Andy Fell \nEditor: Simon Watts