Living with water

Abstract

The city of Bandung is representative of the destiny of many cities in the tropical developing world. Demand driven population influxes combined with a lack of planning and infrastructure leads to massive problems of sustainability. The city faces the twin paradoxical problems of flash floods and the chronic lack of access to drinking water. Land use changes in the Bandung catchment are largely responsible for these water issues. The climate change dynamics only hasten the process of humanitarian disaster. Within this context, it is extremely important to find cost- efficient, sustainable solutions that can alleviate these problems and enable human activity to sustain without suffering. Research suggests that spatial solutions with circular systems may allow for the appropriate channelling of rain water and use it for sustenance. Landscape interventions aim to improve the hydrological order in the catchment, whereby sustained efforts are made to convert hard surfaces resulting from unregulated growth into water absorbing surfaces appear promising. Besides water retention and prevention of floods, these interventions have aesthetic appeal and spatial relevance to intervention through landscape design. They also achieve goals of more sustainable agriculture that further contributes to the appeal of the city and its aesthetic aspects. The efforts have the possibility of promoting eco-tourism for a city that already has abundant natural beauty owing to a volcanic terrain and evergreen rainforest cover (albeit covered under a layer of pollution today). Thus, proposed efforts through phased spatial interventions can create a positive circle of reinforcement where the benefits are much more far-reaching and sustainable beyond the primary goals of the project. Strategies for living with water need great innovation in developing countries where the fast pace of city expansion and population growth cannot keep up with the very slow pace of infrastructure development. The city can be restored to its former glory through a series of affordable hydrological and bio- engineered strategies in such challenging circumstances, creating case study for vulnerable catchments around the world. There is great promise that landscape infrastructural solutions and circular systems can transform the developing world.