Ecologically-based Urban Design in Sustainable Stormwater Management

This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini, M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9

ABSTRACT

Urban stormwater problems are indisputable, many countries have suffered from such problems and will be exposed to greater threats due to urban sprawl and climate change. For controlling urban stormwater, conventional stormwater approaches rely on underground pipeline systems to drain stormwater away as soon as possible. With people paying more attention to urban stormwater issues and environmental quality, multiple strategies which could be collectively called Sustainable Stormwater Management (SSM), have been proposed and implemented for solving different local stormwater problems, enhancing the natural water cycle and protecting receiving waters and aquatic habitats. This paper reviews the literature and describes how ecologically-based urban design (EBUD) interfaces and improves SSM during urban development. SSM covers planning and engineering aspects and EBUD plays an important role for keeping and mimicking nature and also sketching out the best plan for arranging SSM measures. EBUD provides stakeholders with a philosophy and guidelines from an urban design perspective for SSM development, spanning from stormwater mitigation and control to protection of the natural water ecosystem of the receiving water bodies. Subsequent research will use a case study approach to identify priority issues to address when formulating guidelines for EBUD in SSM.