Picture Courtesy of www.nationalpost.com
Friday, September 11, 2009
Floods Unearth Mistakes
A mixture of powerful flash flood storms, poor urban planning, and construction on flood plains opened the gates for deadly flooding in Instanbul, Turkey earlier this week. Water levels rose drowning many cars and leaving at least 31 killed. Its incidents similar to this that bring to light the poor decisions being made both by developers and government officials. We live in a time where more people are living in cities than in rural areas and even the UN estimates that by 2050, "70 percent of people will live in cities, making the size of the world's urban population equal to the entire population in 2004 (approximately 6.3 billion). (Eric Sanderson - Mannahatta) This should be a period of time where nations are inspecting, analyzing, and redesigning our urban mega-cities in order for them to be secure for future generations. Steps are being taken and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs just issued the World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development and Saving the Planet. Rather than tackling on the two subjects separately they have provided an integrated approach based on sustainable development. These are the types of decisions that must now be carefully and quickly carried out. These are the types of decisions we don't want to ignore so others aren't left mourning over accidents that could have been prevented like the Turkish citizens are now.
Picture Courtesy of www.nationalpost.com
Picture Courtesy of www.nationalpost.com
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This is yet just another reminder of how
ReplyDeletefurther demand should result from the need to comply to environmental laws and regulations, particularly flood control. I'm assuming landscape architects can change the face of disaster by preventing storm water runoff in places that are in dire need for it. Prevention is key, and with new graduates coming out into the field, this is one area i feel should be focused on with the abrupt change in climate and sea level rise. Thanks for posting this
-N.H.
So many cities are built on flood plains already. Witnessing these disasters remind us all the time of the importance of planning and why we should never build on flood prone areas. But as landscape architects how do we cope with this fact that there are so many places already built in these areas. How does one even try to imagine how to fix this problem? Can we move entire cities?
ReplyDeleteThose are good questions Mr. Somers. The key is knowledge. The more we understand our environments the more we can "Design with Nature". Maybe these questions will never have to be answered and nature will claim its natural right to those lands.
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