Time for Sponge Cities Mission

Context: Unpredictable nature, unbridled avarice and untrammelled urbanization have resulted in an unprecedented scale of destruction in cities. 

Factors Responsible for Recurring Urban Flooding

• Unprecedented rainfalls: For, E.g. Hyderabad witnessed a 450% increase compared to the average rainfall it receives during September. 
• Inadequate city drainage infrastructure: Hyderabad’s century-old drainage system (the 1920s) covered only a small part of the core city, while the city has grown by four times in the last 20 years.
• Policy issues: Neglect of the following problems:
• Issues of incremental land-use change and ecological commons (like wetlands). 
• Role of the local communities are disavowed: in managing local ecosystem.

Way Forward: Making cities permeable

• The idea of Sponge cities: which will absorb rainwater, naturally filtered by the soil and allowed to reach urban aquifers for city supplies. Its implications are: 

• Infrastructure development: in the form of contiguous open green space, interconnected waterways, channels and ponds across neighbourhoods.

• Support to ecosystems: biodiversity and newer cultural and recreational opportunities.

• A Priority Urban mission: 

• Based on: the lines of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Trans formation (AMRUT), National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) and Smart Cities Mission. 

• To address the following: 

• Regulation of land-use: by development control, regardless of the ownership.

• Watershed management and emergency drainage plan: should be clearly enunciated in policy and law.

• Need for natural boundaries rather than governance boundaries: for shaping a drainage plan, since urban water sheds are micro ecological drainage systems, shaped by contours of the terrain. 

• Ban of terrain alteration: to avoid lasting damage to the landscape and drainage routes. 

• Increase the use of porous material for urban constructions: which has the capacity to absorb water like bioswales and retention systems, permeable material for roads, green roofs and harvesting systems in buildings.

Conclusion: We must not allow nature, human conduct, and urbanization to be mysti?ed and rendered as trans-historic villains and rebuild our cities such that they have the sponginess to absorb and release water.