Urban pluvial flooding and stormwater management: A contemporary review of China’s challenges and “sponge cities” strategy

In recent years, urban pluvial flooding caused by extreme rainfall has increasingly occurred across China. This paper reviews the challenges faced by China in addressing urban pluvial flooding and managing urban stormwater, with a particular focus on a policy initiative termed sponge cities. The paper first synthetically presents pluvial flood disasters in urbanized areas, and analyses their causes and formation mechanisms. It then introduces China’s sponge cities initiative and discusses policy implementation in relation to contemporary understanding of sustainable urban stormwater management and international experience with innovative practices. The initiative, while theoretically well grounded and appropriate by its design principles, is shown subject to diverse implementation challenges, ranging from technological complexity to limited or lack of governance capacity as reflected in management ideology, knowledge and capacity of learning, participatory and integrated governance, investment financing, implementation pathway, planning and organization, and project evaluation. The paper offers some strategies for addressing those challenges, which include: 1) continuous experiment-based deep learning through pilot and institutionalization of knowledge and information management with city-to-city peering learning mechanisms, 2) establishment of institutional mechanisms dedicated to participatory, coordinated and integrated governance of the policy initiative, 3) increased government role in creating favorable conditions for investments, and 4) appropriate planning and an adaptive approach to policy implementation. The paper concludes that the sponge cities initiative can be an effective approach only if China commits to appropriate technical, governance, financial, and organizational measures to effectively address the challenges for policy implementation.