Bengaluru should transform itself into Kongjian Yu's sponge city

livemint.com:

India’s information technology (IT) capital, Bengaluru, a city once lauded for its greenery, grapples with the formidable challenge of both urban flooding and water scarcity. The paradox of a city inundated yet thirsty is stark. Its water ordeal is a tale of many years of ecological neglect and urban mismanagement.

Rampant urbanization and increased coverage of the city’s surface with asphalt and concrete have obliterated natural water absorption and drainage pathways, exacerbating monsoon floods and leading to severe water scarcity in dry seasons. Groundwater levels have plummeted and the city’s reliance on distant water sources is unsustainable and precarious. Laments abound on social media about how the city has trampled its founder Kempegowda’s original plan of a network of lakes and inter-linked canals that kept the city flood-free during the rains and sufficiently watered during its hot, dry seasons.

But it is difficult to blame any single person or group. All the residents of Bengaluru are culpable. The unravelling of Kempegowda’s vision and drying out of its many lakes and tanks has gone on for decades.

For instance, Miller’s Tank, which existed in my childhood, was ‘bunded’ and dried out even before I finished school. The lake-bed housed a slum for many years before giving way to a hospital, offices, auditoriums and housing long before Bengaluru was even on the IT map. An answer to the city’s crisis may lie in the visionary concepts of Kongjian Yu, a Chinese urban planner and landscape architect renowned for his ‘sponge city’ initiative.