Led by uncontrolled migration, ever increasing urbanization, unplanned urban growth, increased fossil fuel driven mechanical mobility, destroying existing flora& fauna, marginalizing nature, rapidly changing climate and obsolete draining systems, globally cities are becoming increasingly unsafe, under the ever increasing threat and challenges posed by repeated incidences of urban flooding. Floods are known to play havoc with human living, adversely impacting cities, physically, socially, economically and environmentally. Floods are known to destroy and damage essential urban infrastructures besides marginalizing, built environment, flora and fauna. Causing enormous loss of human and animal life, damaging built environment, disrupting critical services, and derailing human living, economy and employment at local level, underscores the criticality and urgency of perpetually managing the urban flooding. Considered as elixir of life, in this era of climate change and global warming, water has emerged as the greatest threat and challenge to the sustainability of urban settlements and human living. Looking at the challenges posed by the urban flooding, there is an urgent need to study the causes, outline impacts, and define potential mitigation strategies to minimize and eliminate the menace of flooding from urban areas. Considering the need for and importance of making cities safe against the natural and manmade disasters perpetuated by flooding, paper tries to examine the role, relevance and importance of rationalizing urban planning , carrying out development based on site suitability analysis, using options of retaining rather than draining water, rationalizing urbanization and adopting nature based solutions besides involving communities to make cities safe against flooding.
Jit Kumar Gupta (Tue,) studied this question.