Water Sensitive Design as an Ecologically Based Urban Design Approach to Facilitate Stormwater Resilience for Industrial Areas in Auckland.

Abstract

Rapid urban sprawl leads to tremendous changes to land surface characteristics and various urban environment problems that become visible, such as urban flooding, catchment pollution and receiving waterbody damage caused by increasing urban stormwater runoff. Compared to residential areas, industrial areas have more stormwater problems due to higher proportions of impervious area and industrial pollution. This paper draws on a catchment in Auckland, New Zealand, which contains a developing industrial area. This is a case study example to demonstrate the development of a Water Sensitive Design (WSD) approach that provides a stormwater resilient environment for industrial areas. To identify WSD physical characteristics, possibilities and constraints, document data and digital data from publicly available government databases, were obtained and analysed. Natural urban green and blue spaces, and artificial open spaces, play important roles for applying WSD and they provide potential opportunities for Industrial Water Sensitive Development (IWSD). The assessment of environmental and social elements evidently identifies the benefits for IWSD in the case study area. Green and blue space and the natural water cycle are the keys for IWSD and the assessment identified the multi-benefits from water and non-water aspects that WSD could bring to industrial areas and this could help to encourage various industrial stakeholders to identify objectives and prioritise the features that they would like a WSD project to deliver. A comparison of two types of industrial development in the study proves that the reasonable synergy of urban green and blue space and the natural water cycle in initial planning and design stages is important for WSD implementation. This approach offers industrial development a new concept for achieving a stormwater resilient industrial catchment and finally leads to a sustainable water environment.