#SaulZabar #GuyFieri

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#Beatles

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Kongjian Yu at his office in Beijing. “We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said.Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Richard Schiffman
Published March 28, 2024
Updated April 3, 2024

Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway systems and inundating residential neighborhoods, often with deadly consequences.

Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University, is developing what might seem like a counterintuitive response: Let the water in.

“You cannot fight water,” he said. “You have to adapt to it.”

Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing water, Mr. Yu wants to dissipate the destructive force of floodwaters by slowing them and giving them room to spread out.

Mr. Yu calls the concept “sponge city” and says it’s like “doing tai chi with water,” a reference to the Chinese martial art in which an opponent’s energy and moves are redirected, not resisted.

“It’s a whole philosophy, a new way of dealing with water,” he said.

Through his Beijing-based company, Turenscape, one of the world’s largest landscape architecture firms, Mr. Yu has overseen the development of hundreds of landscaped urban water parks in China where runoff from flash floods is diverted to soak into the ground or be absorbed into constructed wetlands.

Mr. Yu said growing up in a village in Zhejiang Province toward the end of the Cultural Revolution showed him how earlier generations in rural China had “made friends with water.” Farmers in his region built terraces, berms and ponds to direct and to store excess water during the rainy season.

That stood in sharp contrast to the urban landscapes in modern China. Traditionally, cities in China would set aside areas capable of absorbing floodwaters. But such nature-friendly urban design largely ended with the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Yu said. More recently, millions of acres have been paved over to build cities, some of them rising up virtually overnight.

Shanghai Houtan Park in 2006.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The same area in 2018.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

“We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said, noting that much of China has a monsoon climate subject to extremely heavy bursts of rain that pose an increasing hazard as climate change advances. That’s because warm air can hold more moisture, resulting in heavier rainstorms.

Currently, 65 percent of urban areas in China experience some degree of flooding each year, according to Mr. Yu. The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. The United States is the largest historical emitter .

“The concrete drainage systems that came here from the West just can’t handle it,” Mr. Yu said. “We need a new solution.”

The sponge city program was formally inaugurated by President Xi Jinping in 2015 with pilot projects in 16 Chinese cities and has since expanded to more than 640 sites in 250 municipalities around the country.

You can see the concept in Houtan Park, a mile-long strip of greenery along the Huangpu River in Shanghai that Mr. Yu designed on a former industrial site.

Terraces planted with bamboo and native forbs and grasses are bisected by wooden walkways that zigzag between ponds and constructed wetlands. The wetlands filter water, slow the river’s flow and provide habitat for waterfowl and spawning fish.

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#live #music #subway #spanish #musician #perfecto #perfect

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The 42nd Street Shuttle is a New York City Subway shuttle train service that operates in Manhattan. Part of a former Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) line, it is sometimes referred to as the Grand Central/Times Square Shuttle, since these are the only two stations served by the shuttle. It runs at all times except late nights, connecting Times Square to Grand Central under 42nd Street. It is the shortest regular service in the system, running about 2,700 feet (820 m) in under two minutes.[1]

The 42nd Street Shuttle is part of the A Division of New York City Transit, and the tracks that it uses opened in 1904 as part of the first subway in the city. In order to distinguish it from the other shuttles in the system, NYCT Rapid Transit Operations internally refers to it as the 0 (zero). Its route bullet is colored dark slate gray on route signs, station signs, and rolling stock with the letter “S” on the official subway map.

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Ramon has warmed people’s hearts singing songs for passersby. As the video starts, someone says, “You lift my spirits!”

In our Good News video, Ramon sings “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” with background music playing from his phone and a microphone. Reverend Paul Sladkus asks what Peace means to him. Ramon tell us what peace means which a chuckle and a huge smile. “That’s Peace!”

A little story:

“My mother and I lost our apartment when the landlord raised the rent. She went to live in my aunt’s attic in New Jersey, but there were too many stairs there, so I had to go to the homeless shelter. Most of the people at the shelter have addiction problems and mental issues. I’m living with people that I never thought I’d have to live with. The M35 is the only bus that goes to the shelter. Disabled people are supposed to get on first. But as soon as it gets to the stop, everyone rushes in until it’s full, and the bus driver is too intimidated to say anything. A lot of times it leaves without me.”

Update: Ramon said that he did not want donations because his brothers were going to take him in. He insisted that the funds should be used to help others in need.

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