Each year enormous destruction is caused by rainfall to places inhabited below sea level. According to a prediction by the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute, the situation is expected to go worst for Rotterdam as the amount of rainfall is expected to increase by 5% with an intensity of 10%. In order to deal with such an ugly situation officials have decided to take up a project called ‘Waterpleinen’.
This idea of designers Florian Boer and Marco Vermeulen will comprise of a network of surface reservoirs that will collect and store the extra water from the neighboring places. This method will result in protecting both public and private properties from flooding and harmful effects associated with them. In situation when one reservoir is full, another basin can be brought into action by collecting the overflowing water into it. After the rain stops, the water that was collected in the reservoirs either will seep into the soil or drained into neighboring water body or serve as a grey-water system for the surrounding houses.
The Waterpleinen, or Watersquares was originally developed in 2005 and ever since has become official urban policy. As many as 25 watersquares are to be constructed for Rotterdam in the coming years, with a prototype to be constructed soon.
Via: Inhabitat
The Dutch call their collectivist mentality and way of politics-by-consensus the “polder model,” after the areas of low land systematically reclaimed from the sea. “People think of the polder model as a romantic idea” and assume its origins are more myth than fact, Mak told me. “But if you look at records of the Middle Ages, you see it was a real thing. Everyone had to deal with water. With a polder, the big problem is pumping the water. But in most cases your land lies in the middle of the country, so where are you going to pump it? To someone else’s land. And then they have to do the same thing, and their neighbor does, too. So what you see in the records are these extraordinarily complicated deals. All of this had to be done together.”
