From sponge city to sponge watershed: Addressing comprehensive water issues through an innovative framework

Abstract

This paper advocates a shift for Sponge City construction from urban scale towards the watershed scale through strengthening the ecosystem services at a holistic perspective. An innovative framework has been established to address integrated solutions for comprehensive water issues. It enclosed with water resilience pattern, water resource pattern, water treatment pattern, water ecology pattern, waterscape pattern, and LID (low-impact-development) transportation pattern. Specifically, water resilience pattern and water resource pattern deal with the livelihood issues of urban population; water treatment pattern and water ecology pattern provide a sustainable basis through ecological and technical approaches in the context of urban agglomeration. Besides, the waterscape pattern and LID transportation pattern correlated grey infrastructure with green infrastructure, which helps to optimize the quality of urban development and minimize the intervention on the watershed ecosystem. The analyses and discourses from this study identify significant methodological implications to shift the sponge city practice from the urban context towards nature context. The prominent contribution is to optimize the regulation and support service of the watershed ecosystem and promote a healthier environment for people and wildlife living in the watershed.