Emerging Sponge Cities - Foresight Brief No. 005 - January 2018

As global populations converge steadily into cities (UN, 2017), fast growing cities are suffering with intensi ed hydroclimatic hazards. In China, more cities are facing challenges associated with urban sustainability and urban water issues such as aging/outdated water and wastewater infrastructures, urban ooding and a high frequency of extreme weather (Li et al., 2017; Lv and Zhao, 2013). The emerging concept and construction of “sponge cities” is an effective approach to solving urban rainstorms(Liu et al., 2015; Xia et al., 2017) and seeks to enhance cities capacity on ood prevention.