New York Needs to Get Spongier—or Get Used to More Floods
September 29th, 2023
Via Wired, a report on how devastating deluges around the world point to the metropolis of tomorrow: the “sponge city.” Think more parks and fewer parking lots. TWO YEARS AFTER the remnants of Hurricane Ian dumped up to 10 inches of rain on New York City in just two hours, the metropolis is once again inundated today by extreme […]
Read more »Los Angeles’ Green Streets Replenishing Aquifers
September 12th, 2023
Via Blue and Green Cities, an article on Los Angeles’ green infrastructure: In California, the Southern California Water Replenishment District estimates that in a single year alone, Los Angeles loses 58 trillion gallons of water to the ocean. To collect some of this excess water off the city’s impervious surfaces, the city is designing and […]
Read more »Becoming a ‘Sponge City’ at Shenzhen Speed
September 6th, 2023
Via The Diplomat, a look at how Shenzhen is a prime example of China’s Sponge City Program, which aims to both prevent flooding and increase water supply in urban areas: In 2017, the city of Shenzhen, China invited foreign teachers like me to visit Futian Mangrove Nature Reserve, on the coast of Shenzhen Bay overlooking […]
Read more »Making Cities More Absorbent: The Porous City Network
September 6th, 2023
Via Bloomberg, a look at efforts to make cities more absorbent: Kotchakorn Voraakhom is the founder and CEO of Landprocess, a landscape architecture company in Bangkok whose designs incorporate nature-inspired parks and gardens that absorb and direct rain. As flood-prone coastal nations such as her native Thailand peer into a much wetter future, Voraakhom says softer, more […]
Read more »Chicago Is Spending $3.8 Billion to Fight Flooding. It Might Not Be Enough.
September 2nd, 2023
The Wall Street Journal describes Chicago’s $3.8 billion flood control plan as being both ambitious and inadequate, an inadequacy arising from the assumption that future rain events will be like past ones. But, at least, Chicago is attempting to tackle a problem that exists all over America. A better solution than investing in more storm […]
Read more »China’s ‘Sponge Cities’ Aim To Re-Use 70% of Rainwater
August 15th, 2023
Via The Conversation, an article on Chinese ‘sponge cities’: Asian cities are struggling to accommodate rapid urban migration, and development is encroaching on flood-prone areas. Recent flooding in Mumbai was blamed in part on unregulated developmentof wetlands, while hastily built urban areas are being affected by flooding across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. This is not a trend only in developing […]
Read more »'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.
'Green Shoots' is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during a downturn. It references a period of growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.