Sponge City and social equity: Impact assessment of urban stormwater management in Baicheng City, China
Introduction
In recent years, increasing urbanization and more frequent torrential rains have caused waterlogging and floods in major cities in China, with heavy social costs for cities and residents (Yu et al., 2015). The Chinese government has introduced a series of initiatives, including the Sponge City program, to alleviate water issues and promote the transition to a more environmentally friendly urbanization model.
The Sponge City program consists in a flexible control of rainwater to address waterlogging and flood by emphasizing the principle of ecological sustainability in cities (Liu et al., 2017). It aims at achieving a city development model that allows the storage, permeation and purification of rainwater and provides a range of ecosystem services for environmental, social, and economic purposes. Its main objective is to restore the natural water cycle and its ecological functions by implementing both structural and non-structural measures in a combination of green and grey infrastructures (The General Office of the State Council, 2015; Qiao et al., 2020). The Sponge City program is regarded as a nature-based initiative supporting low impact development techniques, such as green roofs, bioretention facilities, vegetation swales, and constructed wetlands (Qiao et al., 2020). Its objectives are comparable to similar initiatives such as Low Impact Development (LID) in the United States, Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS) in the United Kingdom, Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) in Australia and Active, Beautiful, Clean (ABC) water in Singapore (Wong et al., 2020).
To promote the construction of Sponge City, 30 cities in China were selected in a nation-wide pilot project initiative that started in 2015 (Qiao et al., 2020). A series of national policies and regulations were issued to guide the program throughout the country and institutional reforms were gradually undertaken at different governance levels to coordinate the implementation of Sponge City initiatives (MHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China), 2014, MHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China), 2015, MHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China), 2016, MHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China), 2019; The General Office of the State Council, 2015). The program was further supported by a document released in February 2016 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, strengthening the importance of pursuing liveable urban environments (The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, 2016). Under these new frameworks, the residents' well-being became one of the main objectives of the Sponge City program (Baicheng City Government, 2018b; Qiao et al., 2020), including the right for all to be protected from water-related risks (floods and water pollution) and to have equal access to blue-green services and water supply. As a combination of green, blue, and grey infrastructures, the Sponge City program was aimed at providing various ecosystem services, including provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Besides the improvement of the urban built environment, the program was also intended to generate multiple social benefits, such as public health, environmental education, increasing public awareness, reducing crime rates, and creating city identity and attractiveness (Wang, 2017b; Baicheng City Government, 2018b; La Rosa and Pappalardo, 2020).
As in China, many countries have formulated stormwater management plans to deal with waterlogging, floods, and runoff pollution at the urban level. However, the environmental and ecological benefits provided by these projects did not always represent equal values to all citizens (Black and Richards, 2020). Vulnerable groups such as low-income residents and cultural minorities are often not represented in planning decisions concerning urban development processes and infrastructural projects implementation. Even when they do, it is not often clear whether plans and projects that claim to be resilient and sustainable do also avoid inequalities (Anguelovski et al., 2016). For instance, in the United States, a stronger focus on the relationship between flood responses and social equity was placed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This experience has revealed that post-disaster alleviation measures and green infrastructure construction can generate new types of injustice as these interventions negatively affect vulnerable communities, by displacing them or by prioritizing elites at the expense of low-income groups (Anguelovski et al., 2016, Anguelovski et al., 2019; Palazzo, 2019; Shokry et al., 2020). The experience in New Orleans provided the momentum for more research on social equity in flood management policies and practices. Now, we can extend the lessons learned worldwide to the outcomes of Sponge City programs in China, with the aim to prevent possible future injustice deriving from large-scale top-down infrastructure projects, and to assess their social effects critically (Wolch et al., 2014; Palazzo and Wan, 2017).
Current assessment of Sponge City outcomes focus on environmental performance and monitoring and it is often carried on with model evaluation (Liu et al., 2017; Deng et al., 2019). Scholarly research addresses Sponge City projects policy review (Qiao et al., 2020; Yin et al., 2020), public support and perceptions and their financial costs (Wang et al., 2017a; Wang et al., 2017b). However, only a small number of studies explore the potential of social benefits deriving by extensive Sponge City interventions that include public participation and an active role of the local communities (Wang, 2017b; Gong et al., 2018). In general, cross-disciplinary research of Sponge City programs and social equity is still underrepresented. For instance, the current Assessment standards for Sponge City implementation GB/T 51345–2018 does not contemplate a comprehensive range of indicators focusing on social equity (MHURD, 2019).
To bridge the gap, this study aims at increasing understanding about the social effects produced by these innovative stormwater management projects by assessing how they perform from a social equity perspective. Building on a tripartite framework which includes distributional, recognitional, and procedural equity (Meerow et al., 2019), this paper develops a methodology based on assessment indicators customized to Sponge City programs in China. The tripartite framework adapted to the Chinese context also clarifies and suggests a roadmap for achieving social equity objectives in future implementations.
Baicheng City in Jilin Province, one of the most notable examples of Sponge City implemented in China, is used as case study to assess its social outcomes.
Section snippets
Theoretical framework
This study is aimed at developing and applying a theoretical framework to assess the environmental and social equity benefits of urban stormwater and flood management plans and programs in China.
The definition of social equity has evolved over time, from a sole focus on equal access to resources and capital to a broader concept of “resilience”, including also the recognition and participation of communities in the decision-making processes (Schlosberg, 2004). An expanded and widely accepted
Results
This section presents the assessment of social equity through the analysis of Distributional, Recognitional, and Procedural perspectives in an application of Sponge City initiatives in Baicheng. Each perspective is discussed according to different indicators as defined by the theoretical framework (Table 1).
Discussion
This paper argued that environmental enhancement agendas carried on in the frame of large urban renewal projects may not always guarantee social equity. Thus, the study has proposed to examine closely whether the Sponge City program in Baicheng was able to generate benefits to all residents and promote equity.
This research was based on the definitions proposed by Schlosberg (2004) and successive frameworks developed by Meerow et al. (2019) and other scholars, to assess the impact of Sponge City
Conclusions
This study has extended the assessment of Sponge City programs beyond its technical and environmental aspects, to include social equity from an institutional, procedural, and public perspective. The research has revealed that recognitional equity and procedural equity are not sufficiently represented in current Sponge City programs planning. Lessons learned from the Baicheng case study can indicate a way towards the definition of new policies aimed at social equity, targeting specifically
Funding
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31870704] and supported by UNSW Sydney School of Built Environment.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
We thank Ms. Hou Shuang for her support in the development of the literature review, data interpretation and translations, and Dr. Wang Wenliang who provided the data from public consultations and evaluation of Baicheng Sponge City program.
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