Abstract
About one tenth of humans are impacted by water shortages around the globe. Water resilience is worsening under climate change because intensifying weather extremes induce more severe and increasingly frequent droughts and floods. In particular, China, as the world’s most populous nation, has battled with persisting water shortages and devastating floods for decades. As a consequence, Chinese scholars have designed the sponge city concept in the early 2010s to relieve cities from the growing pressure of water shortages and floods. This is done by integrating a more natural, green infrastructure into existing urban drainage pipeline systems for absorbing, storing, and purifying rainwater in a sponge-like manner during rainfall events. Here we review the principles, design guidelines, construction items and assessment requirements of sponge cities and other similar strategies for urban stormwater management. We present four case studies of sponge cities in China in both newly constructed and renovated urban districts. Overall, China's sponge cities appear promising for green urbanization, to relieve cities from water scarcity, devastating floods and urban heat island effects, while restoring the ecological functions and aesthetics of urban natural environments.
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Adapted from Chan et al. (2018) with variations
Adapted from EPA (2018)
Adapted from Yin et al. (2021)
Adapted from Wang (2021) with changes
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42277209), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2021JM-008), and the Key Research and Development Program of Xianyang (Grant No. L2022ZDYFSF042). The authors thank Qian Liang for gathering information, Ruiwen Jiao and Yinghui Zhao for improving the graphics, and the anonymous reviewers for providing detailed comments that helped improve the contents and presentation of the manuscript.
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The funding is provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province and Key Research and Development Program of Xianyang.
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Han, J., Wang, C., Deng, S. et al. China’s sponge cities alleviate urban flooding and water shortage: a review. Environ Chem Lett 21, 1297–1314 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-022-01559-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-022-01559-x