Meng Meng, together with Marcin Dąbrowski, Faith Chan (Nottingham Ningbo University) and Dominic Stead published a chapter on the Sponge City programme in Guanghzou in a book edited by Adriana Galderisi and Andrea Colucci. The book is entitled “Smart, Resilience and Transition Cities. Emerging Approaches and Tools for a Climate-Sensitive Urban Development” and was published recently by Elsevier. A PDF version is available via ScienceDirect here.
Abstract
Many Chinese cities are increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change, particularly to flooding. The National Sponge City Program was set up to address this challenge. This chapter examines how municipal interventions in spatial planning have been formulated in response to this national program. The case of Guangzhou is examined, a mega-city in the Pearl River Delta that is particularly vulnerable to flood risk. Here, the city government is seeking to improve local resilience to flooding by linking spatial planning and water management. To date, the implementation of the plan faces cognitive, financial, institutional, and technical challenges, which limits the potential to make Guangzhou more resilient to flood risk in the wake of the changing climate.
Meng, M., Dąbrowski, M., Chan, F., Stead, D. (2018) Spatial Planning for Climate Adaptation and Flood Risk: Development of the Sponge City Program in Guangzhou. In A. Galderisi, A. Colucci (eds.) Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities. Emerging Approaches and Tools for a Climate-Sensitive Urban Development. Amsterdam, Oxford, Cambridge, MA: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811477-3.00019-5
