Water Sensitive Urban Design - Briony Rogers - HotHouse WATER
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) combines technical design with in-depth understandings of social processes and human needs to produce sustainable, liveable, resilient and adaptable urban communities with water at their heart. This is about more than infrastructure. Its about our experience of place - how we engage with our surroundings and with each other in our surroundings. Its about designing communities comprised of seamlessly integrated public spaces, residential and commercial buildings - places that are verdant, cool, aesthetically beautiful, elegantly practical, environmentally sustainable and secure in their resource needs. The 20th century approach to water was to pump it in and pump it out as fast as possible. It is all purified to drinking quality yet barely 10% of it is drunk. Storm water falls on our roofs and streets and we whisk it away as fast as possible, out of sight and out of mind. WSUD is turning this picture on its head by treating all water as a valuable resource, no matter what state it’s in. Storm water is retained in artificial ponds and wetlands, providing life-giving water to plants. Green walls and roofs and lush leafy streetscapes transform buildings and public spaces. Food is grown for the community, in the community. On hot days, we get more shade and evaporative cooling literally creates a microclimate, making things more liveable for human and animal residents alike. Plants also filter storm and waste water, helping to prevent pollutants from flowing onwards into the ocean. Wastewater from kitchens and showers can be biologically treated in this way or run through a small Membrane Bioreactor down the road, producing recycled water for all those non-drinking needs like flushing toilets or running the washing machine.
Briony has a fascinating mixed discipline background, being a civil engineer with a PHD in environmental sociology. This makes her superbly qualified for her work in Water Sensitive Urban Design where not only does she have a consummate grasp of the technicalities but she understands people and how they operate. The Cooperative Research Council for Water Sensitive Cities in Melbourne, where Briony is a Research Fellow, is Australia’s leading centre for WSUD research and project development. So vital is this work to the future liveability of Australian cities that the CRC has in excess of $100 million of research funding over the next 15 years and works with over 70 research, government and industry partners. One thing is for certain - our cities have to get more water smart and Briony and her colleagues are at the forefront of that change.