WHY POROUSITY?
We believe that landscape architecture can lead the way towards a sustainable city.
Porous City Network works to increase urban resilience and adaptability to confront future climate uncertainty in vulnerable communities in Bangkok by reclaiming urban porosity through a network of public green spaces.
PCN works to increase urban resilience and adaptability in vulnerable communities in Bangkok, Thailand. We tackle climate change through urban porosity. What is porosity?
PCN makes the city porous by transforming underused impervious surfaces into a system of productive public green spaces, and advocates maintaining threatened landscape infrastructure like agricultural land, canals, and ditch orchards, which help mitigate excess water. Our solutions call for permeable interventions like urban farms, green roofs, rain gardens, and permeable parking that provide needed space for water absorption.
PCN is different than other climate-focused organizations. We are a placemaking team of landscape architects, urban designers, and environmental designers. Instead of focusing on policy or training, we will provide real, built solutions to climate challenges that benefit vulnerable communities right away.
Porous City Network was established in 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand.
ABOUT POROUS CITY
PCN’s objectives are to increase climate resilience in Bangkok through a built network of permeable public space projects, and expand knowledge of design solutions for climate resilience through research, outreach, and public education. This increased resilience will beneft the city as whole, but the main benefciaries
of our built work are residents of vulnerable communities. Climate-vulnerable communities tend to be economically vulnerable as well, located in areas that are especially prone to fooding and
environmental hardship. PCN will focus our eforts on these vulnerable communities to add needed social space in addition to food-reduction strategies.
Bangkok, the city of three water sources: rain, sea (Gulf of Thailand) andmountains run of from northern Thailand. As for Bangkok, the city’salready-precarious position just 5 feet above sea level has, combined withland subsidence. Tropical location of Thailand and the infuence of seasonalmonsoon rains and local topography make it prone to foods. In Thailand,there are three large dams that help regulate water fow in the centralplains were unable to cope with the large amount of rainfall, but the management
of pumping station could not help, it more difcult to accommodatethe runoff of foodwaters from the north.
HOW WE WORK
Porous City Network partners with vulnerable communities to raise awareness of climate challenges and create site-specific design solutions. Design guidelines, education, and capacity building ensure increased urban resilience, ability to adapt, and community preparedness for future uncertainty.
To start our process, we identify vulnerable sites in Bangkok threatened by the effects of climate change, like water management issues and urban heat island. We partner with communities to begin a permeable public space project. PCN commits to a co-creating design dialogue, where we host neighborhood meetings to identify project program (like a playground, urban farm, or covered market space) that works best for the surrounding community. We use our expertise as landscape architects and environmental designers to ensure that climate challenges are addressed in the design, through permeable surface and use of native plants. PCN designs and oversees construction of the projects, partnered with the community to ensure a transparent process.
During the design and construction process, and after a project is implemented, PCN leads workshops to teach maintenance of the new public space - like hands-on lessons about urban farming - to ensure that it is used and loved. We also raise awareness of climate change and urban resilience.
Work with us.
BANGKOK IN THE PAST
FROM GREEN CITY TO GREY CITY
1917
2017
Bangkok’s geographic location and rapid urban development have made the city highly at-risk regarding climate change. Fifty years ago, the area that is now Bangkok was largely agricultural land which absorbed seasonal fooding and monsoon rain; today, this has been paved over by unchecked development. This extensive impervious surface has degraded urban ecology and increased stormwater pollution, urban heat island, and ooding (including catastrophic fooding in 2011).
Now, Bangkok is the fast grow hard-paved city on wetland. The city is at sea level, congested with trafic and constant under- construction projects. The construction waste, solid waste and dump keepincrease to many areas in Bangkok, but there are less
of control and management of all kind of wastes.
PROBLEM TO SOLUTION
FLOODING PROBLEM
The city is prone with water stresses and
intense ooding. These problems are getting
worse each year. The eects of sea level rise
overlaid with land subsidence, may mean up
to 25 mm per year of net sea level rise in some
areas, such as the larger Bangkok metropolitan
area or the river mouths in the gulf of
Thailand.
POROUS
SOLUTION
Porous City Network aims to insert porousityinto urban fabric. Productive greenspaceprojects will help city manage the waterissues and much needed of green publicspace. The design of landscape will help toreduce the temperature in the city and thefunction will help to manage the surface03
WHAT ARE POROUS CITY INTERVENTIONS
Urban areas face critical climate resilience issues. Decades of rapid urbanization worldwide have created vulnerabilities and increased water stresses in urban landscapes. Urban sprawls destroys cities’ natural ecoservices and capacities to adapt.
In Bangkok, agricultural land once absorbed seasonal flood and cycles of monsoon rain. Today, decades of rapid urban development have paved over this permeable surface. Bangkok faces heavy season rain, and today the water has nowhere to go, which causes massive flooding and environmental problems. This is only getting worse with effects of climate change.
Porous City Network improves urban resilience through porosity.
What is porosity? It’s a like sponge - it’s a space that can absorb water, like the agricultural land that was here before extensive urban development. We want to re-introduce permeable surface back into the city, through a network of public green spaces projects, like small parks, urban farms, and canals. Urban porosity is critical to managing water stress in Bangkok.
POROUS CITY INTERVENTIONS
Retention Pond can treat the storm water and non-point source of water from the urbanization by the designed to support emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation.
Retention lawn can help to control pollution and erosion control, the design can be locate in front of the residential zone, which can create cooling effect and heat dissipation.
Green link can help the problems of storm water-control infrastructure, green alleys also will increase the reliability of local water supplies by
reducing runoff, improving water quality, and supplementing the City’s water supply via groundwater recharge.
Detention pond act as the storage basins or facilities that provide flow control through attenuation of storm water runoff. Detention pond help
to control the runoff of waste water from the street and traffic.
A restored canal would preserve structures and artefacts the context of the city, built to serve a transport system and help to prevent fooding
situation in the city because the canal is the pass way to drain the high amount of water in the raining season.
Park help to create positive effect on mental and physical health of people. Parks resources can mitigate climate, air, and water pollution impacts on public health.
The Pocket Park can create the various type of public activity and increase the social interaction in the area and can increase the walkable to the people and decrease the private car user.
Urban farming can increase food security because the urban poor can earn or supplement their income. Urban farming is a great way to efficiently use the land we do have to feed the people.
The Rain Gardens perform to manage the surface runoff to prevent the stagnant water that might create the contaminated waste water.
Green roof : Three stories building with the green roof can roofs can lead to 5-15% electricity reduction during summer and conventional roof surfaces can exceed ambient air temperatures by >50°C. Green roofs could reduce temperatures a further 2°C & extend a 1°C cooled area over a larger geographic region.
