So previously, I shared about urban sprawling, the occurrence where city dwellers seep out and start building homes in urban or sub-urban areas. Today’s headline: urban flooding. So what is it? If u guessed the converse of urban sprawling, you are… wrong.    ‘A’ for effort, but an overall ‘F’.        Just like my Physics class.         OK, I digress. More intuitively, it is simply the flooding of cities due to various causes, such as increased surface runoff of rainwater or lack of a proper drainage system.

Usually, the soil would absorb and allow water to flow through, however with the paving of roads and hard, impermeable ground for buildings, rainwater do not seep through the soil, but runoff the ground, onto lower elevation. (cite here) What results is firstly, a huge heap of water gushing through, hopefully the drainage system, of the city, and secondly the gradual drying up of the groundwater below the layers of tar, leading to possible imbalances of the water table and even land sinking. (cite here)

Environmentally this is dreadful. From a completely human point of view, this is also bad news. In the event where the rainwater floods overflow into sewage pipes, we get a massive stink, a re-enactment of the Great Stink in 1858, and disease. All these I feel is inevitable. Many point to bad urban planning as the chief culprit, only exacerbated by flash floods and prolonged heavy rainfall. (cite here) Nothing wrong in my opinion. However, we shouldn’t put the blame to the early town planners. In this world where time strictly flows (pun unintended) in one direction, trial and error is possibly the only way we can affirm the feasibility of an idea. We shouldn’t put down these pioneers and only focus on the bad, but acknowledge that without them, modern day expertise would not be possible.

On the other end of the spectrum, should we instead forsake our city lifestyle to preserve the balance and stasis that has lasted millions of years? Maybe, and maybe not. I won’t know. We can only try, and only years down the road, will I have an answer. Will we go backwards by going forward, and forwards by going backward? Or even more backwards just going backward? In any case for now, I will choose to act in the most rational manner: solving the problem at hand, learning from past mistakes, and most importantly, choosing the most sustainable option for the future.

^^ twist

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