From Der Spiegel, September 14:
As the climate warms, Copenhagen is likely to see more torrential rain storms like the one that inundated the city in 2011. Since then, the Danish capital has taken action, redesigning parks and streets to quickly drain away vast amounts of water.
It’s shortly after 1 p.m. on a gray, Wednesday afternoon as Ditte Juul Sørensen, standing in a park in southern Copenhagen, talks about how she intends to flood the dog park should it become necessary. The green area used to consist merely of a sodden meadow, a decrepit playground and a couple of dirt paths. But over the last seven years, the 46-year-old landscape architect has completely transformed it.
Today, it marks the end of an invisible river that winds its way through Copenhagen, designed to save the city in the event of torrential rainfall.
"The meadow will collect the water," says Sørensen, "and this artificially created riverbed will lead it onward." She points to a red-and-yellow paved pathway leading back to the petting zoo. In total, the invisible catchment area can hold 15,000 cubic meters of water, roughly the equivalent of 83,000 bathtubs filled to the brim.
The park is one of the endpoints of an extensive network of above-ground and underground canals, green spaces, specially adapted roads and catchment ponds. The Skybrudsplan, or Cloudburst Management Plan, cost 1.8 billion euros and it is designed to protect the city from episodes of severe rainfall for the next 100 years....
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