Abstract
This paper discusses whether our existing urban development planning model can adapt to the coming environmental depredation occasioned by climate change or will this urban model have to change? The paper highlights three specific environmental problems, pluvial and coastal flooding and polluted stormwater. Urban agencies are aware of these problems and have made a number of attempts at addressing them. The problem of storm surges causing waterfront damage was highlighted in the landfall of Hurricane Sandy (O'Neill & Van Abs, 2016) on Manhattan. The response by local government was a national competition (Rebuild by Design, 2014) won by BIG with their proposal, the Big U. In the winning entry, they proposed to combine different techniques, soft and hard flood infrastructure, to protect the Manhattan littoral. Stormwater treatment or remediation for urban can be accomplished by conventional engineering solutions. For example, stormwater can be stored in underground tanks, letting heavier contaminates drop out, as in the Toronto waterfront development (West 8, 2015). Smaller-scale measures such as rain gardens, and swales that retard and treat the stormwater, are also features of many new waterfronts (WAA, 2012). This paper argues that while all of these measures are laudable, the overall effect is piecemeal and disconnected. The procedures don't address a fundamental problem of the conventional urban development. The model emphasises high-density building, hard impervious surfaces, and limited public space. The result is that it is very difficult to install the necessary remediation measures for the environmental problems; there is literally no room within the urban plan. Understanding that the environmental problems of the urban development are not simply isolated incidents but part of larger environmental systems that are changing through climate change is an important conceptual leap. To concretise this thinking, Low Impact Urban Design (LIUDD) (M. van Roon & van Roon, 2009) offers both a theoretical framework in which to understand an urban development within a larger environmental system and a number of practical methods with which to address specific environmental problems. The paper will explore how by re framing the typical urban development site within the wider urban catchment, an understanding of these larger environmental problems can be apprehended. Through the use of catchment analysis and GIS modelling, the position of an urban development site can be understood as part of a hydrological gradient from the hinterland to the receiving environment. The consequences of applying appropriate environmental remediation remedies to combat the disruptive effects of climate change on the conventional urban development plan are explored . The investigation finds that an urban development can become a resilient to the effects of climate change by developing an adaptive landscape. Building an indigenous and ecologically viable landscape will help to increase biodiversity, ameliorate the consequences of contaminated stormwater and reduce flooding. This process calls for an interdisciplinary approach of architecture-related disciplines to help improve the performance of buildings and urbanism in the face of the effects of climate change However, the contemporary urban planning model must be transformed. A densely populated, gridded master plan is a positive impediment to the adoption of the remediation measures that will help to address these serious environmental problems. The conventional public space of the typical urban development has to be rethought of a remediation landscape. The typical urban building programme can no longer conform to the grid like masterplan, instead it can be clustered by assembling the required GFA into the spaces ‘left over’ from the necessary remediation programme.
