“I keep in mind once I was a younger youngster in Bangkok, we used to sail our boat on the clear floodwater,” says panorama architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom. “Flooding was enjoyable.”
However when a tropical storm hit the town of Bangkok in 2011, her opinion of floods modified without end. Residents needed to flee their houses and greater than 800 individuals in Thailand misplaced their lives. “Floods had been not enjoyable, it moved to concern,” Voraakhom says.
Not solely has rainfall elevated in Voraakhom’s lifetime, however so has the ocean degree. The densely populated capital can also be sinking by as much as 2 centimetres (0.8 inches) every year. In keeping with the World Financial institution, 40 per cent of Bangkok might be flooded by 2030.
Now Bangkok is popping to nature to assist combat the floods. Voraakhom is amongst a bunch of panorama architects serving to to launch city forests all through the town, which not solely create extra inviting areas for its inhabitants however are crammed with improvements to assist deal with floods.
A metropolis forest bigger than New York Metropolis’s Central Park is slated to open within the capital as early as this December. The location of a former racetrack, it’s going to grow to be named His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Nice Memorial Park. The brand new park can be crammed with 4,500 timber and a floodplain the place rainwater can be purified with vegetation.
This joins Benjakitti Forest Park, the place a former tobacco manufacturing unit has been become a brand new US$20 million metropolis forest. The park, which was absolutely opened in June 2024 after a comfortable launch in 2022, acts as a sponge in the course of the monsoon season, and one other city forest in Bangkok has been tilted by 3 levels so when the monsoons hit it fills like a pond.
Town has one of many lowest ratios of inexperienced areas in Southeast Asia. The goal is to construct 500 parks by 2026.
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The rise in impervious surfaces like roads and housing, coupled with insurance policies that focus solely on draining water into pipes, canals and rivers, has been a major reason for the extreme flooding in Bangkok.
Pakkasem Tongchai, water and wetlands officer, IUCN Thailand
The fast progress of Bangkok within the Eighties noticed a capital that was as soon as surrounded by orchards and rice fields flip into an city metropolis. The Chao Praya River, one of many largest in Thailand, cuts via the capital, and from it have sprung a community of rivers and canals within the metropolis, which now battle monsoon rains, wastewater and rising tides.
As the town grew, the as soon as porous panorama modified to suit the wants of a contemporary nation. Skyscrapers changed stilt homes, and a few of the canals had been crammed in to create roads.
“The rise in impervious surfaces like roads and housing, coupled with insurance policies that focus solely on draining water into pipes, canals and rivers, has been a major reason for the extreme flooding in Bangkok,” says Pakkasem Tongchai, water and wetlands officer for IUCN Thailand.
The change in river habitat and water high quality additionally affected marine life such because the critically endangered large Siamese carp (Catlocarpio siamensis).
But nature is now serving to to supply the answer. The picturesque new memorial park incorporates an inbuilt floodplain, a weir that slows down the circulate of water, and generators to wash the water. The floodplain is impressed by the late king’s idea of kaem ling, or monkey cheeks, the place stormwater is saved in water tanks for later use. The city forest, which is surrounded by three canals, may also filter any water overflow from the canals with a nature-based water filtration system.
“Metropolis parks which can be designed with options reminiscent of ponds, storm drainage basins, rain gardens, or different components can probably contribute to slowing down runoff and retaining water inside the park itself,” Tongchai says.
All through the town, blue-green structure is now exhibiting how nature can assist combat floods. The grounds of a former tobacco manufacturing unit are actually the 41-hectare (102-acre) Benjakitti Forest Park.
This city wetland has been designed not solely to control stormwater, however clear contaminated water and supply habitat for wildlife. Native vegetation such because the rain tree (Samanea saman), bo tree (Ficus religiosa) and khee lek (senna siamen) had been planted inside the grounds which can be designed to retain 87 million liters (23 million gallons) of water.
Award-winning panorama architect Kongjian Yu, founding father of Beijing-based agency Turenscape, has turned an impermeable concrete floor right into a porous panorama by creating large ponds dotted with islets. Polluted water from a neighboring canal is pumped into the park and run via the filtration system of native vegetation earlier than flowing out into the wetland. Bioswales, within the type of flower beds, have been carved into the middle of former haulage roads to assist make them extra permeable.
Yu says that persuading individuals to tear up concrete obstacles and use vegetation for flood safety isn’t a straightforward process. “Cities in monsoon areas can not adapt to local weather change as a result of we’re copying Western-developed fashions, reminiscent of concrete, pipe programs and [manicured] gardens,” Yu says. “These fashions are primarily based on a light local weather. We want [to] discover a new mannequin which is extra climate-resilient, environmentally pleasant. It must be a sponge-like system.”
Right now, tens of 1000’s of holiday makers stroll alongside the boardwalks and wind their method up the skywalk that zigzags via the tree cover. Greater than 90 species of birds, together with egrets, bitterns and storks, have been seen on the park. “The birds will now disperse the native seeds and the forest will flourish by itself,” Yu says.
Voraakhom says the bottom line is not how one can rid the town of water, however how one can dwell with water: “Bangkok was once a giant swamp, a giant delta metropolis. I feel the capability of capturing the water [has] been destroyed.”
Voraakhom’s firm, Landprocess, is behind the modern Chulalongkorn College Centenary Park, constructed at an incline in order that stormwater can circulate down its sloping lawns and collect within the built-in retention pond on the backside. A hidden reservoir underneath the park means it could actually now maintain practically 4 million liters (1 million gallons) of water.
Whereas vegetation is used to wash the water, guests can even experience stationary water bikes to assist aerate the retention ponds. Voraakhom says a park can have greater than greenery — it could actually even have layers of practicality.
Wijitbusaba Marome, director of the City Futures & Coverage analysis unit at Thammasat College in Bangkok, says that whereas excessive rainfall can be difficult to a park, a localised system of containing water is the best way ahead.
“We now have methods to divert water away from the town, however there’s nonetheless a big quantity of water that has to cross via Bangkok due to its topography. While you discuss a brand new city or growth, you must discuss an space for water, as a result of in any other case it’s a must to hold following the issues.”
This story was revealed with permission from Mongabay.com.
