How to transform sinking cities into landscapes that fight floods | Kotchakorn Voraakhom

TED Talks Daily

TED

Creativity, Business, Design, Inspiration, Society & Culture, Science, Technology, Education, Tech Demo, Ted Talks, Ted, Entertainment, Tedtalks

4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2019

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From London to Tokyo, climate change is causing cities to sink -- and our modern concrete infrastructure is making us even more vulnerable to severe flooding, says landscape architect and TED Fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom. But what if we could design cities to help fight floods? In this inspiring talk, Voraakhom shows how she developed a massive park in Bangkok that can hold a million gallons of rainwater, calling for more climate change solutions that connect cities back to nature.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This TED Talk features urban landscape architect Kachicorn Voracom, recorded live at TED Women 2018.
0:10.5	At this very moment, with every breath we take, major delta cities across the globe are sinking,
0:21.6	including New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, New Orleans,
0:27.6	and as well as my city, Bangkok.
0:32.6	Here is the usual version of climate change.
0:38.0	This is my. Nothing of climate change. This is mine.
0:40.6	Nothing was just crocodile on the street.
0:44.4	This is an urgent impact of climate change,
0:48.4	over-sinking cities.
0:51.6	Here you can see urbanization of Bangkok
0:55.5	growing in every direction,
0:59.4	shifting from porous agricultural land,
1:03.8	the land that can breathe and absorb water
1:06.2	to a concrete jungle.
1:11.2	This is part of it looked like after 30 minutes of rainfall,
1:16.3	and every time it rains,
1:18.4	I wish my car could turn into a boat.
1:22.4	This land has no room for water.
1:25.6	It has lost its absorbent capacity. The reality of Bangkok metropolitan
1:34.3	region is a city of 15 million people living, working and commuting on top of shifting muddy river delta.
1:47.7	Bangkok is sinking more than one centimeters per year,
1:52.9	which is four times faster than the rate of predicted sea level rise.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -2258 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.