 Welcome everyone, we are very excited to see you all here this afternoon. My name is Alec Segerford-Winton and I'm part of the learning team here at Cooper Hewitt. As part of the Smithsonian, Cooper Hewitt is the nation's museum devoted exclusively to historical contemporary design. We are home to one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections with more than 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries. This week is the National Design Week, a week in which we celebrate the past, present and future of design, as well as the winners of our annual National Design Awards. We are extremely proud and honored today to host Hongjong Yu, who is the winner of this year's Landscape Architecture Award. Yu is a globally recognized landscape designer and founder of Turrinscape. He is also a founder of Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Several of Yu's core ideas for nature-based climate adaptations, including the sponge city concept, have been implemented nationwide across China. In this illustrated talk, Yu will discuss his work and how his landscape architecture methods and ideas can help mitigate climate events such as flash floods, superstorns and tidal surges. After a presentation of his work, Yu will be in conversation with Matilda McQuade, our acting director of Curatorial. There will also be time for questions. Matilda is deputy director of Curatorial and formerly Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt. Among the exhibitions that she has curated in her over 20 years at Cooper Hewitt are Nature, Cooper Hewitt Design Train Annual, Extreme Textiles, Designing for Head Performance and Scraps, Fashion Textiles and Creative Reuse. Matilda is also a renowned author, editor and writer of architecture and design. Thank you so much again for coming this afternoon to this very important and very time of talk. We are extremely thankful to IBM and eBay for making this program possible. Thank you. So it's a great honor. Thank you. And thank you all for being here. This is the first one. It's really, really my great honor. To begin with, Yu only speaks his own. Anywhere, at least multiple languages. So anyway, everyone. We're lucky today as the museum is too open. Otherwise, the government shut down. Oh, people got Friday. So that's the problem I'm going to address. Shut down the government or shut down the museum is not the solution. And so we have to try to try to build it grow. Now my hypothesis is that what if we turn this grow? So how to grow? Drive growth into a spawned, a planet spawned, a spawned planet. This is my first time using this energy here at Kogokyui Museum. So this hypothesis is if you have a dry ball and a wet ball, you have 20 degrees of temperature difference. And you have 70% of ocean, which is water. And you have 30% of dry lines in line. And sea level rise is only one millimeter, maybe two millimeter every day. So why don't you stop the growth and stop the sea level rise? Well, you create a cool, I mean, resilient, wet, lush, comfortable growth. So that's the whole hypothesis. So the idea is spawned a planet. I was born in a small village, a very small tiny village, in South China's Zhejiang province here. You can see, you can even certainly recognize it. And we saw White Sand Creek here. This image was photographed by U.S. Army back in 1906. That was my hometown. So White Sand Creek. Yeah. And the creek was managed by 36 long ways, which I really wanted to educate as a village, to educate as thousands of hectares of farmland. And I took care of the path road. For 17 years I worked in this small village. Rice planting, take care of buffalo fishing, swimming, all the long ways is a small White Sand Creek. And every year, when monsoon season comes, the creek will swell up. And this time the whole village gets excited. Because this time the fish, the big fish, swim upstream, can be productive. That's the kind of thing I remember. And it's so excited with monsoon front. It's not something so dangerous compared to there. You can warn it every, when you get a precipitation above one inch, you can warn it like that. So a total different story. Now this was during the normal days. I remember when I was 10 years old, I fell into the creek in the eastern flood. But I survived. You know why? Because the creek, the streams, the river is lush. Full of wells, reeds, vegetation. So I just scrubbed these vegetation and survived myself. I saved myself. So flood is not so fearful. When you can have green and blue together, and you have something and slow down the flood and be able to adapt the flood, it's friendly. It's not so harmful. So that's my understanding about flood. When we are talking about monsoon climate, there's about 20 inches or 30 inches precipitation. One day, no two inches here. Four inches. Several days ago, here in New York, it got flooded. So climate change to me was nothing new. But everything changed. The river, the creek. I remember seeing the Weinstein creek in 1960s and in 2000. And today, it's a natural creek become concrete like that. Everywhere, I would say, almost everywhere, particularly in the developing countries in China, USA, India, in Mexico, in Bangladesh, the natural rivers will be channelized because we believe that the concrete can stop the city, the village from getting flooded. And we believe we can control the water. Exactly. And in my small village, which is a really tiny small village, we have seven pounds distributed in the village. And every day, people use this water in from the pond. We drink from the pond. Because this is where you can diverse the creek, water, and store it. So that every day, we depend on the pond to use it. And seven of them. And whenever they have, this here is a drought. I remember when I was a kid, we always increased additional pond so that during the dry season, you have enough water to get sustained. So it's the first season, you keep water, during the dry season, you recycle the used water. This pond, I remember, I helped the commune, the bigger pond. And eventually, the whole area, the whole landscape becomes spongy, becomes porous. You see all this green area actually are ponds. They evenly distributed across the landscape. Now that's why the landscape becomes resilient. During the first season, it gives water, it gives dry season, we use water. And this whole village, this whole area becomes so lush, green, resilient, and about to visit productive. Now this is my last image I still keep when I left my village in 1980s. Years later, when I went back to my village, after my college, after my living in New Beijing, the river, the system got all proved like that. Flood dropped, pollution happened and lost. It has become ubiquitous, it happened anywhere in China and in the world. Flood happened anywhere in the world. Whether it is a developed country like the US here, the New Orleans, you see, when a dam fell, when a tide fell, how did it get flooded? And here is a Bangladesh, the whole river polluted. Global-wise, 85% of the sewage didn't get treated along into the ocean, into the water. And so we understand that the great infrastructure can not save us from flood, from pollution, from all these environmental problems we have discussed. And here, the last image you can see in our central park, New York, how severely is it polluted and how severely is it flooded. This is also in New York. That is the middle of this most developed country. Certainly, we think we can use stronger flood wall, we can use much thicker, much powerful drainage system or pipe system, more complicated water treatment system like this. We believe we can solve this problem by this industrial technology. We could create infrastructure. Now this may be necessary in some cases to solve urgent problems, but this, I describe as a manicured, a little food technology can actually worsen the situation global-wise because it consumes a huge amount of energy by using more and more concrete and destroys the natural system, its own resiliency, destroy nature's own resiliency and also breaks connection between man and nature. And it's a fail. It failed two weeks ago in media. I imagine tens of people get killed. It's not a flood. It's by the failure of artificial infrastructure. So damn cracks. New Orleans failed because, not because of flood, it's all because of the failure of the flood wall. So here, how is this misconception about the solution? We use so much energy, so much coal in order to fix the world, in order to build the infrastructure, but it's a fail. And we'll fail. Now the alternative is, I call it the big-fit solution. The big-fit solution. Nature-based solution. Use nature instead of concrete and steel to solve the problem. To make the whole system back to resiliency. I, which I call a big-fit, big-fit solution compared to this manicured little fit. The alternative solution is called ecological infrastructure, instead of grey infrastructure. It is green. And water is a key for such infrastructure. So a city based on water-centered ecological infrastructure is called sponge city. But I will expand it to sponge watershed or sponge planet. From sponge catchment to sponge watershed to sponge farm, sponge town, all the way to sponge lake and sponge ocean. So the whole globe can be transformed from build, dry, dry and hot globe into a lush globe. So that's how, and it must across scale. From national continental scale, to regional, to local, to the individual project, a river, a park, a well and a street. So that's a whole idea. How can we utilize this vision of sponge planet? Now certainly we have to begin with political campaign. Now this is what I did in the past 25 years. I invited the mayors, the politicians, the prime ministers, even the president, this political leader of China. And as I really thank, so thankful to Microsoft in New York, he actually translated my book, the name of the leader of China. Microsoft, in memory of him, he passed away during the COVID. So I delivered more than 300 lectures to mayors, municipal government, to use the political power how to transform this gray into green. Now this is kind of my lectures to hundreds and thousands of mayors. This is some of the lectures we can see. I wrote to the prime minister in 2006 to how can we secure at national scale, at continental scale the green infrastructure, psychological infrastructure. And these then five regulations, five laws have been passed to protect this sensitive ecological infrastructure, which we define called ecological security parties at national and regional scale. And the idea is that not only does it protect, but it transforms. Transforms this ecological dystopia urban, industrial dystopia landscape into green landscape. Now this is that version. And in order to make that happen, you need to have simple tools. You need to make some solution that makes the solution simple, inexpensive, easy-working, meanwhile, beautiful. Now this, I get inspired by my childhood experience. My experience inside a little village which I call farmer's approach or peasants approach to create a working earth scale used to sanctify, to make the sanctification and modernize the nature-based solution to become liquidable. So from the traditional right, it designed engineering modules and tested and designed and become liquidable modules and can be operated, practiced at large scale. For example, terracing, ponding, dikeing and ponding and islanding. Imagine on the slope, 2000 above sea level, very little water. How can you grow rice? How can you create rice paddies? Terracing it. Very simple tool. And imagine in the poor river delta area, it was a swamp, flooded. Every year, flooded to create a pond and islanding system to turn this doubt area very productive and beautiful and biologically diverse habitat. Beautiful, productive, sustainable. So these are the solutions, simple solutions I found during the past 25 years and tested and implemented in over more than 200 cities and built over 600 projects, larger scale projects to solve the problem. For example, storm water regulation. Over 65% of Chinese cities suffering urban denodation every year and almost the same amount of cities in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, suffering even worse situation like this. Simple solution. Terracing, ponding, islanding and create sponge right in the middle of the city. This is rendering, this action. In one year, we transformed this flooded, urban denodation, flooded area into a safe and beautiful area and cut us urban property value, urban development in this area. You can see how much development happened in just three years and this whole area become a beautiful public space and habitat for biodiversity. This was before and this after. It's just a couple years difference. You can see how the problem gets solved. This was before. See how the blue area, how this area got flooded during the monsoon season and this is after. See how the flood problem got solved and also how it cut us this urban development. So long as it's on the park, the property value, so long as it's area increased 400% in just four or five years. 400% imagine. Similarly, in Langtang, which is at the middle reach of the Yangtze River, rather than every year we found this urban dump for coal ash. The coal ash dump polluted, used it and we transformed it into a floating forest. Again inspired by this ancient farming technique and create a forest resilient to the flood. Meanwhile, become a beautiful park for people to use during most of the year, 99% of the year because monsoon flood similar like New York one day is finished. So this area, you can handle about 2 million cubic meter of water. It does MIT technology review cover page over there. These Washington Post also celebrate that and it is such a welcome favorite place for the city, for people. And it's just doing coffee two years ago. We commissioned this project. Right in the middle of Bangkok. Now Bangkok is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to the climate, to the sea level rising, a long field, a tobacco factory. So it's very simple to use one machine and use army force to implement this sponge idea. And down in one year you can see cut and fuel, transform 17 hectares of land into a central park right in the middle of Bangkok. So you become a low maintenance very low expensive expenses, low budget and certainly living is growing and resilient and also people mandate with people we see. It will become one of the most favorite public space for the city. And I imagine we are talking about about the flood. We have the regional flood, we have urban inundation. What about regional flood? Now this is the case. When you try flood war I heard that New York will build a flood war here. And eventually you lose your manager so what is up? So here is a flood war. People try to protect the city from the flood. You know what? What happened? When halfway built this river the mayor called me in a farmer's company because the buffalo cannot go to eat the water. Can't go to the water. So tell me what to do. How can we do it? I told them we have to devour the water. Recover and become a spawned river system. Resilient. Resilient. And use vegetation. Now this vegetation is much harder than concrete. Concrete will fail every 20 years 30 years. But the vegetation can grow forever. It can produce itself. That's another example. A very heavy storm for the war and we totally get rid of it. And it covered with resilient landscape. Now people will say what happened if there are storm? Has this flood war been removed for 20 years? And it has been experienced for a couple huge storm. Historical storm. And it survived. Not only survived. It flourished. And people love it. And the property value increased dramatically. Again, we replicate this application across the scale this enterprise in Citroen, a big river. We remove concrete. Recover the repairing well line system. Create a spawned park. And certainly this spawned park is easy to maintain. I imagine if you get flooded it's fine. But if you are fine, you just wash it. You just only cover hours work. The same what happened here after this park remained beautiful and for people. What about pollution? Now the most polluted material actually nutrient. Phosphorus, nitrogen, like essential part. So water is basically polluted by phosphorus. Phosphorus I imagine is a fertilizer. Right? And the solutions use line scale. Line scale can clean these nutrient rich water. Now here is the process. A designed well line system or constructed well line system can function as a water cleansing system. Here is a demonstration in Huangpu River in Shanghai, 2009. So we learn from farming create terraces terraced well line system constructed well line system and grow with all kind of native vegetation to clean up to absorb the nutrients phosphorus, nitrogen and can produce crystal clean water. Meanwhile create a beautiful and here is a test you can see. 85% of nutrient can be removed. Imagine in central part you have such a huge area that can function as a cleanser. As a living system to clean these nutrient. Or based on our data a hector of well line can clean, can produce clean water 800 cubic meters. We can imagine how the nature can do it. So think about larger scale. Now this is about larger scale. This is about 700,000 square cubic meters in size. It is an ocean. North China's Bohei Sea, pruted, heavily pruted. So that's our pilot experiment. Why don't you turn the coastal line into a a living sponge that can clean water. Because all the water from the farm line from the city, from the sewage will eventually run into the ocean. So before running into the ocean we created this sponge system. It's a futrator. This is what it happened. So it is this futuring system. And based on our pilot experiment pilot project, it functions very well. So what about climate a storm surge? We are all afraid of this sea level rising and this is a storm surge. And that's why people build into the wall. Exactly during the process when people build into the wall a successful convince the mayor to remove it actually. That's the side. This is the wall. That's the side. To protect the side. So instead of from the water we actually let the water come in. Because when you let the water come in you see the landscape pattern you actually can reduce the destructive force of nature. So that's why it's an intertwined finger type of landscape actually become a futrator of the surge. That's the process. That's how it works. So nature force can be reduced, can be friendly. And this side can certainly become an ideal habitat for mangrove to get established. This was again this was this was a site. This was before and this is after. This is after. So it is also for the people of course. So after that everybody sees nature because it's an intertwined finger it's a part of nature part of people for people to use and man and nature live in harmony as I said. What about pollution? Soil pollution. It's a long field of liberation. The most part of the world don't have this kind of liberation. And 60% of soil is polluted in the cities particularly in the developing countries I would say. And it's actually expensive just use an underwear to clean it. You have to train your soil you have to seal this sponge. Green sponge use water. The storm water to create this micro ecosystem. Use plant to remove the contamination in the soil. Even heavy metals. That's the side. Collect the storm water because storm water is acid acidous and the soil is alkaline. So as a mix together we have a time for all kinds of species to remove pollution and this contamination in the soil. This is what is today. And this is an experiment it's a test to see how it performs well diversity, grazing of soil grazing of water and also beauty in the city. This is a practice even at a larger scale. Now we are talking about hundreds, thousands of hectares in this area. That's also a little bit down. Solid waste. And again inspired by the ancient farming technology, terracing. Created terraces use sewage to irrigate these terraces can be irrigating the soil waste this is today. And this is a performance with all the data about diversity the function of the cleaning system and also all kinds of toxication toxic soil problem of cleaning. Now we are talking about a piece of land we are talking about transformation to whole infrastructure. This is a great infrastructure we are so proud of in every city this is a new solution. Transform it remove it and create a green sustainable landscape that function as infrastructure. Not only the clean water we create a habitat for biodiversity for people in use. Now this is a performance test. The nutrient can remove 80 or 85 percent and habitat can be recovered right in the middle of the city. So now most of my project is outside of the US because it is a developing country currently in China, in Russia what about the US we can't do it here also we have a problem here also in the US now here is in Seattle a piece of land small but then we test this nature-based solution Pink High Park right in the middle of the international district. Territory is a ground different way the country is a strong water eventually the community loves this idea the country catches the water cleans the water and nourishes the vegetation so this is a presentation to the local community and there is a lot to love the idea certainly all kinds of activities this is the process of working with the community and this is the final mass plan the rendering and finally it can do I can do it it is small but it is in working it is working you can see here it was before this after you can see how life this park becomes for the people as always imagine this used to be an abandoned park of this yeah these today activities and my friend in Jeff Hall at Washington University passed an observation to see how people use in the morning and it is unknown what kind of people use it performance what about your home what about individuals how can individuals also get involved in this course of building a private room now this almost all buildings I would say 99% of buildings global wise are energy inefficient we use too much energy by building a country in China with 50% of energy what about terms of building in Ukraine now here is my my imagination a farm building become a farm the big farm, the vegetation and of course fish energies also of course but I can do it in my home at least this is my own apartment fifth floor and I collect storm water for the roof turns the balcony into a vegetable garden that's a vegetable garden I can produce every year 32 kilograms of vegetable I collect 52 tons of storm water for the roof yeah you can make any as my bathroom I now since here I put a bathtub because I can recycle some water and I even use storm water in the living room here is the wall now this living wall is different from the wall you see in the airport such as artificial wall totally different really growing living wall very no maintenance irrigated by storm water and as a children as children and imagine in the past three days actually three years during the pandemic lock down in your room what will happen people get mad my colleagues in half side this living wall can produce juice smell gas and juice smell that can cure depression cure depression yeah juice smell so if you have a living wall in your gore in your living room you can recover 30 percent quicker from disease or illness now that's the idea how you can have a healthy planet meanwhile have healthy human being have a healthy so here is the community the people who learn from my practice I give a lecture here also in my own building so more than ever we have to distinguish the way we build our cities the way we treat water and even the way we define civilization imagine we use the different civilization how much concrete wall we build how much highway we build how much patch system we have built so that's the definition of civilization and that's cause problem we have dry hot non-resilient gore totally destroyed whole system because nature has resiliency so go back to nature sponge city and sponge planet these are holistic and nature based solution to make wise use of nature's services nature provide free services as they are free for the benefit of the planet and it's the welfare of the people so this is my imagine how the globe can be much vegetated green and if it's too hot in New York it can cool off if too dry in central it can become more wet that's the globe we want and we all have this applicable we already have tested applicable useable solution here already so think like a king the king has territory a king with love the king is someone who has love take care of the territory that's the landscape's global surface the earth's scale but we have to act like a peasant the peasant the donor verse work with soil, work with plant, work with species just to think about the sustainability the future the future the future thanks peasant big future but really it may work that's my share thank you thank you that was incredible and before we get talking about New York there's a lot to talk about New York I wanted to ask you some questions but I know there could be a few but we always are interested in the process and I've listened to a couple of your lectures now I don't hear you talk about the process except for showing slides about the political process so I wanted to find out first what comes first talking with the politicians or getting a project or maybe it's all different and then how do you what is your office what is your who comes to the table is it the politicians is it the colleges I mean who's part of the discussion on the various projects and a little bit just about your staff and who's on your team it's kind of several questions so how to make this sort of routine happen what's first the politics I really talk about my journey first of all you need your imagination that's why I build that imagination I build my utopia I was inspired by so many I certainly have my own cosmos back to my village now that's my route so also route but in primitive cultural village we're going to go back of course we're going to go back to that time again even it is so beautiful but grafted on that route I have this knowledge which I learned at Harvard I have the idea of this in my car's idea of design with nature I have the idea about I spent this granted garden about the city the storm waters the ecology I have the idea of my calling here also Charles Water Urbanity Ecological I certainly have social ideology James Jacobs the death and life of America city of great cities so this I build on my utopia what's the future city should go back but that's only my imagination you cannot if the politician don't accept it if the public don't accept it it becomes totally utopia so how to make this utopia become a real vision in China we have a top-down system in the political system in the U.S. my workforce they were a top-up system so in China I adapt this model to this top-down system so I write letter to mayors so the first project I get actually when I give a lecture to the mayor so after I give a lecture to the mayor one of them sitting from here I have a hundred mayors if I convince them one will be enough for me to start with one project so that's happened in 1998 so I convince one mayor from Guangdong province which is a very open city and he invited me to build the project which is a shipyard park which integrated my ideology, my utopia and that project got the first award was being awarded by American Society of the landscape architecture and it was awarded in China and as I said you have this tool you have this powerful camera to say I have the ideology I have this utopia and I have this project so it becomes snowboard so now from three, one, three people which is 25 years ago we have now 400 people working with me so we have about 100 people going on like this so because the problem is so huge it is a huge problem climate adaptation pollution you have to solve this problem and in the US you have a total different system you have a grassroots system that's why my test is here in Seattle no one works you talk to people you talk to community and then you you put your utopia and you realize the utopia I think the most system kind of works but first of all you have to build this imagine utopia and speaking with the mayors do you think what do you think influences them the most is it the data that you provide them because I know you you've done a lot of data on this or is it the beautiful pictures the drawings that you present what do you think really kind of impacts them most well I think the most is to find out the problem is to to make them painful so aware that cost billions of dollars a lot every time and you have to tell them what can be done what alternative if you can fix great infrastructure to put billions of dollars which will fail again or are you going to feel beautiful and sustainable and everlasting great infrastructure so that's I think that's very contrast images that's what I do so that's why in the first book I published talk to the mayor I listed all these failures the failures in the US the mistakes here happen here the mistakes happening in Germany in other countries so we are not going to repeat this mistake again we have to learn from this experience or solution and this solution certainly is beautiful that's why I make design important make design design is is powerful that you can make beauty aesthetics but under the aesthetic you have solid ecology which I call deep form we will manage straddle forms which are not as simple but beautiful but not as simple beautiful shallow form unsustainable so the beauty here for me must be deep deep form I called John Lai he said a deep form is to build human design human design above the ecological process under this ecological solid process beauty solid so I didn't separate from beauty I'm working do you think that I'm wondering about Chinese tradition do you think that it's kind of intrinsic and in Chinese tradition do you think that how you're approaching it the way China has built these concrete canals whatever you said and it's true it comes from Western ideas of construction so is it going back to the tradition that is making it also more sustainable do you feel along with the technology of course modernization happened in China very shortly four decades maybe I will say it's a larger scale urbanization pick up early 1990s and then China opened in 1987 so urbanization happened right outside so that's why the Chinese urbanization we simply largely copied as a Western model the European model the Los Angeles model the whatever and all these models is based on the understanding that we based on the industrial technologies, great infrastructure and New York is the same I mean it's the Dutch built it up as an infrastructure but remember in France or in England where the first industrial revolution the climate is quite mild so infrastructure designed is dependable depending on the calculation very precise in New York for example infrastructure the journey system here is designed based on 1.5 inch of precipitation that's almost maximum so if you go beyond the 2 inches or 4 inches like 2 days ago you get flooded we all have an hour 2 inch an hour and 4 inches a day 5 inches a day so New York failed because climate change the Chinese city failed because the English structure from the western developed countries cannot adapt to the monsoon climate so you will see all cities in monsoon region Indonesia failed India failed Malaysia failed even Singapore so people from Singapore we can build high and high war and build secure and secure journey system but that cannot be sustainable because how secure is the journey system that can handle 20 or 40 inches of precipitation which is only half a year of rain and another half a year is going dry and eventually the whole system gets back with all this so that's why the great infrastructure failed either in monsoon area or in this climate change developed in Europe or in America that's why we want to fix it we want to invest huge amount of money to build or to expand this great infrastructure or you find alternative so on that subject and because I think we all are familiar with some of the proposals that are coming up from the army board engineer one of which I think was in the New York Times in June building this 20-foot high wall which is totally outrageous that minimally it wants to be reduced but it also doesn't protect other vulnerable communities where it is so there are other proposals out there but they have multiple alternatives there's barrier gates at various locations in the harbor there's lots of things but there is virtually nothing said about using the natural landscape or to add nature to part of this process so I don't know who you need to write to but or send your book to but you know what I know it's I know you're in the state way you know New York but what can we do here what is some small things and what is a big thing already they're looking at what are the measures that would be spent on this project so what could we get from $56 million if you were to do that well I have to remind you in 1970s in Germany it's a sea wall class right yeah in Germany and I also have to remind you that two weeks ago in Libya yeah so any wall any wall either they collapse already or they will be collapsed guaranteed guaranteed and if you build a sea wall I don't know how much, how high if you have 500 years of protection or you have suddenly a protection you don't know how much the flood will come even if it happens the whole Manhattan will get flooded we're talking about millions of people because you are so dependent on this wall and it will collapse one overnight so okay that's the worst situation yeah but I have to say why I talk about the sponge planet because as I said sea level rising every year it is rising okay but the whole globe is drier right and we still we keep dumping the flood into the ocean so about 40 based on my data, based on my data about about 50% of the sea level rising water access water come from the land and as maybe 50 or 60 come from the iceberg so if you keep the water on the ground okay on the dry planet you saw at least how was the problem already no matter how and it just turns the sponge turns the planet into sponge meanwhile everywhere in Africa, in China, in US in Idaho people dream away people the ground draw out everywhere the science is the problem and the global only have constant water so water is constant we didn't increase any water either in the air or in the ocean or on the ground or through iceberg so the holistic solution is create a wet more wet, I mean wet so wet just sponge keep 50% keep all the front as much as on the ground instead of clean away by this wall by this front and call it fresh all the front like in New York so this is a big future this is big future if you saw the problem in India or Pakistan or Libya if you saw the problem here in New York because only 1 millimeter sea level I see here we can solve the problem that's a global big picture and you cool off the temperature here also it's a global the small picture is is what I observed in New York this is in central this is the central ah, yeah when I click here you will see how I treat I mean all studies one is my mentor but certainly he didn't have this problem at his time yeah so water comes from the drainage come out, water drain away right so you have 2 problem is the within the wall honestly it's a sea level rising I already mentioned sea level rising within the wall actually cause daily uncomfortable can be disastrous also I remember in China in the city of Q 79 people in 2012 in the city on the street people can die in a car yeah I can immediately see that the central power can function as a sponge people can uncomfortable of course because this is a heritage I want a heritage of course but also see the drainage system and there's a wall between the green right here the park is basically sealed from the no function besides the equation of yours of course yeah the same even if it's millimeter change you can solve the problem there's a park there's a street so like get rid of the sidewalk get rid of the sidewalk walk somehow create a sponge and like this one the sponge can absorb some water now how much water can you solve and even if the central power is off you see the shop arm delusion and the flood of course and pollution and see that's the problem but people get excited by the way like my man so clumsy I stress now this now this idea that big picture is global picture small picture is Manhattan the island if the central power has about 3.2 square kilometer size which means you can solve the problem can come as much as park area based on my experience at least because you want to have such you know 5 inch rainfall that's nothing compared to monsoon monsoon region so that's my proposal but I need to start I have to be very sensible that's only hypothesis but that solves the problem from roof from the balcony from the kitchen garden anyway that can easily solve the problem within the wall but beyond the wall as I said you need a global picture but certainly you have more resilient solutions which again I need more details I cannot say right now I won't commission you yet you know I was talking with Charles just right before because we have two extremes we have this water over London but then as you mentioned there are parts of the United States that have little water there's water shortages so what can the places that have water shortages learn from your sponge city how can that influence how they may get more water or how can we share the water that we're having an over abundance with them again it's not about the amount of water it's about the distribution of water yeah it's about time so I was in Saudi I was in the United States area I mean Saudi they have that also the concrete river the drain away is a flood from the desert there's an ocean because that's exactly what happened and we are the same so anywhere you will have flood and even more serious in Los Angeles sometimes yeah you have that's called a freshwater flood so and this water actually can easily be the main and the charged aquifer keep on site and on the ground aquifer is the most sustainable way to protect the water actually and the knowledge of vegetation and also increase air temperature I mean air and reduce the temperature so it's a holistic solution so it's no matter where in India you have you have 4,000 millimeter precipitation in in the dry area you have only 10% of that so that's the idea about keep all the water on site as much as possible no matter you don't have to collect aquifer yeah yeah alright I'm going to open up now to questions and answers from the audience I'm sure you have some questions we have all the way on the back and I think wait for the microphone alright well I just want to say thank you it's a really interesting presentation and you talked about each vacation like how your sponge cities can help your nitrogen phosphorus from waterways is there any part of the sponge city that can address more solid waste like plastics and stuff that isn't biodegradable and that a national environment can't remove well it's not as honest as the sponge city when what goes out plastic and it's as honest as it is but suddenly you can recycle you can integrate it you can maybe grade but not building this on the city oh yeah yeah hi I know that it takes a long time for plants to get mature and they have different phases in design and I know in New York we are designing for the last generation but I see you're designing China and just having it in the last few years so how did you make that happen so fast so fast yeah first the problem is it's urgent in China you can flood as I mentioned 65% of Chinese cities have flooded you have to solve the problem as I said because of the infrastructure fail you have to find an alternative that's why it's an urgent problem second that's why we have to make it happen immediately I mean most of my projects can be built in two or three years some in one year so that's why you need to find a construction engineering solution how to make this fast easy low budget that's why I told you this there's a kiddie park in Thailand which is operated by army without skill one machine fast now how can this become beautiful not as a design problem how can make this working at the same time beautiful not as a new aesthetics I see so you need an urgent problem you need a very fast client you need a very easy working design skill hi thank you so much I've been thinking a lot about food security issues as well I think in my permaculture you would plant nut trees and a river bank deep roots it's harder in the city context but I have heard about places in China like city gardens and I was wondering if your clients are very comfortable using food production as a way to be a part of your sponge city and I would say food is part of the sponge city idea all the rice paddy is spongy food so I always integrate food as part of the productive landscape so landscape as a system ecological system ecological system so ecological system has all kind of surfaces production is one of the surfaces producing of food clean water biomass the second is regulation I'm talking about dry and wet and cool and hot that's regulation free services and the fourth is life support for biodiversity and the fourth category is beauty human is spiritual inspirational and beautiful landscape so this is all categories of services so landscape is holistic it's not single-minded that's why it's different from this army corp engineering solutions it is holistic ecosystem services Hi professor I am an architect so I'm not quite sure about the scale of your projects I noticed that most of your projects are extremely large and they are more like the Wayland park but like in New York we have extremely high dens of the urban context do you have any ideas about like micro-climate micro-sponge stuff can be inserted in this kind of urban context yes as I demonstrated in this Bangkok Central Park is a beautiful place to test this idea but all the living all the walls all the roof top can turn into green sponge and all your backyard and your interior living wall can happen so if you are talking about water I would say such a high density you can collect at least I would say maybe 50% water for the roof top and your garden can at least collect the water so democratize all these projects not a simple shop not just a wall not just a channel individual family people will follow all these sponge solutions my my balcony you can all do it how do I hi I have a question for you so you mentioned a few times in your presentation that a project has been built that the property values went up significantly in the area which is great for some people like landlords in New York City but there has been an issue in New York where some communities see the advantages of a project like a new park but they also see a potential threat in being displaced one of these projects being constructed so I'm wondering if that has ever cropped up in the history of the projects that you've built and if there have been effective ways that cities who have implemented these sort of sponge projects to combat this issue of pre-injectification I heard a lot about gentrification so it was certainly difficult to discuss here since gentrification I mean certainly when you make a place beautiful, make a place solve the problem of flood do you want a place to be flooded or do you want a place to be to be safe of course you want a place to be safe right if a low income family stay here if no one fixes a landscape here you can flood it it's still here of course no gentrification but what if you fix a landscape and the peace property value also increase what's the matter with that I don't understand I just don't understand so you can stay here under the power of Retro because you are profitable you are profitable it's your profitable value you don't have to sell it to the profit I mean you don't have to sell it to the profit you don't have to sell it to the profit I think that's another issue I'm talking about the landscape itself can solve the problem can increase the profit value can create holistic services beauty I don't think that any problem is that I think it's probably for people who rent and then the rents go up and they can't afford it so that becomes a whole other housing issue that's another issue yeah probably the tax increase yeah well that allows a social scientist to discuss there you go you're completely of course yeah it is I mean that's the issue I didn't Mexico has a similar problem I was in Mexico it's a very similar problem then you will find that along the river such a beautiful place as the river is a green and people all back walk with the river and say all lonely come you know what a potential here what a huge potential here can make this area developed it becomes very scary you never see it it makes the same problem is it just this problem or is it make an excuse to leave it just environmentally erratic yeah thank you for your time and the presentation is really interesting I have a question regarding using native plants native plantations to to I guess beautify the place and you also mentioned it's low budget projects how is that possible integrating native plant because in my mind using native reintroducing the native plants are more expensive thank you no that's a misconception I think it's a misconception in the U.S. also at the Venjakiti park we did we just saw it you don't have to plant big trees or plant native means say most Singaporeans are right least and easily productive so I think that should be cheaper instead of more expensive it's all I think it's a commercial commercial misconception because the nursery usually don't produce the native plants that's a problem so my suggestion is create a native plant nursery I make a fortune I'll teach you a set about using native plants that's so critical to helping the environment and it's so natural to where we live and I wish that you teach our younger children about this you know we're trying to save the planet it needs to be taught in schools all our beautiful tributaries that are around here that you see junkyards next to them suddenly they didn't want the ferry they said oh we have a sandy area and on the other side all these gorgeous tributaries and people come and fish it's just incredible and it was the young people that said no we don't need a ferry you know we can walk to the subway and you know we have also our history because the way they farm in different levels so I just applaud you and when you come to New York we have to create this and think this way and I loved in New Orleans where they were using instead of sand bags using oysters and then once they put the oysters in there with the bags other oysters started growing out of it to protect it it was the people it's always the people thank you one more question thank you so much Dr. Yu it's really great presentation so I wonder if we conclude that Sponge City is actually the integration of gray and green infrastructure not just green this is our question another is how the communities be involved and engaged in the whole process in China another question would be the maintenance maintenance project who are we going to maintain so the quick answer is that yes I don't want to over through the industrial revolution that's not my I would say that we have to interpret the natural best is the key maintenance in China here is different China is more by government maintenance we should say government budget but here you have these different foundation but more diverse you also have government budget government maintenance that's why is the key and it is a real native established native education you can have very little maintenance it's my experience yes thank you thank you for an extraordinary presentation and your accomplishments are really extraordinary for the last 25 years my question is very simple why hasn't the world followed this model why such an extraordinary and unique model only affine to China what's the explanation so that's your next project hahahaha you demonstrated hahahaha you proposed go to the street that's why we didn't have Russian I think because we are on the track we are on the track the track is we trust that human technology can solve all the problems that's the wrong track we already know that that's why we have to understand all the failures and this revolution take time and take really we need a huge amount of energy artists, media, public education education is so important and certainly top down all the money is needed imagine how another revolution happens it's it's full of revolution it's needed almost from some other changes changes in politics it's difficult well thank you all for coming thank you for your incredible time and your lecture was just really fantastic and I think we're all inspired so make a comment make final comments hahahaha I really appreciate it