China is re-engineering old cities and designing new ones to accept, rather than fight, natural water flows in a vast project spearheaded by ‘water detectives’

Professor Kongjian Yu is the founder and principal designer of Turenscape, which Fast Company named one of the 10 Most Innovative Architecture Companies of 2021 for its work in “balancing China’s hyperspeed urbanisation with green sponge cities”. An often-outspoken voice in the world of landscape architecture and urbanism, Professor Yu has been heralded by Michael Sorkin as “a hero of effective advocacy within a system fraught with perils.”

Sustainable Futures – Leave No One Behind

The Design for Climate Adaptation pre-event serves to generate interest and discussion around the theme of this year’s International Union of Architects conference: Sustainable Futures – Leave No One Behind. The Design for Climate Adaptation track emphasizes people, multiple forms of research, knowledges, and action.

The father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, turns two hundred this month, but his legacy now comes with asterisks.

Cities in China are increasingly embracing nature and becoming “sponge cities” to prevent flooding, informs Deutsche Welle. The term sponge city refers to a nature-based solution which uses the landscape to retain water, slow down runoff and improve water quality throughout the process. It moves away from levees and channels to control water, and is akin to similar strategies by different names in all corners of the world, such as green infrastructure, sustainable urban drainage systems and low-...

In the coming decade, China is expanding its plans for sponge cities. They can help prevent flooding, promote biodiversity and cut emissions. But what exactly are these cities and how do they work?