Sponge City: Resilient Cities, Urban Planning and Catchment Risk Assessment

Summary

Sponge city Kajiado: The overarching goal of the programme is to alleviate water scarcity in Kajiado Town through the creation of a sponge city. A sponge city holds, cleans and drains water in a natural way using measures that fall broadly under the 3R approach. A sponge city also creatively adjusts the environmental flows to increase investment in sustainable water and decrease pollution of the towns resource.

Goals and results

• Goal is to have urban recharge established as a proven concept and method, divided in two results (outcomes):
  • The sponge city model is known, applied, promoted and brought to scale: proof of concept
  • The people of Kajiado have an increased availability of good quality, affordable water.

Main activities in the inception phase:

• Pilots (showing the feasibility of the approach), mapping and assessments (of hydrogeology, drainage, sanitation, as well as the local social and governmental environment)
• Verification, holistic planning (based on pilot results, mapping and assessments), agreements with partners and stakeholders, mobilization of community groups

In the implementation phase:

• establishment of recharge zones / parks,
• construction of roof water tanks and water infiltration at household level,
• constructions of weirs, ponds, plugs,
• Capacity development of masons (in building affordable roof water harvesting tanks)
• Strategy formulation on water abstraction at alternative sites (with rechargeable water)
• Strategy formulation on water quality and sanitation: reducing infiltration of sewage and other pollutions like rubbish blocking drains, construction of wetlands
• Monitoring and evaluation (focusing on environmental, social, technical and business aspects), communication (both internally and externally)

References

• Project page