The resilient sponge city district: protect the climate, strengthen the neighbourhood

Climate adaptation, rainwater management, biodiversity, quality of life and neighbourhood activation: this creates visible role models, reduces heat stress, improves the living environment and strengthens people's identification with their neighbourhood. With many small interventions, a neighbourhood is deliberately made more climate-friendly, heat-resilient and water-sensitive. The focus is on private and semi-private areas where visible changes are possible particularly quickly: front gardens, courtyards, driveways, parking spaces, commercial yards and residential environments. Many of these areas are now sealed, heat up strongly in summer and drain rainwater unused into the sewer system. This is exactly where the project comes in: sealed surfaces are gradually unsealed, rainwater is retained, stored and seeped away on site, and the areas are transformed into small building blocks of a decentralised sponge city through climate-adapted greening, shade structures and rain beds. The innovative core of the project is that the change is not primarily initiated in public spaces, but directly in private neighbourhoods – where owners, housing communities and the neighbourhood can act quickly and where many small measures can have a major overall effect. The aim is to unseal as much as possible with the neighbourhood and to green it biodiversely. Objectives: Less heat build-up nicer property Less flooding Better quality of stay Value Enhancement / Image easy-care, good design Elements (BSP) Rainwater art trail through private courtyards Climate-friendly model road only through voluntary private measures Sponge City Certificate for Houses/Yards Heat traffic light for the neighbourhood with indications of cool private places Cobblestone return campaign with creative reuse concept Water sponsorships for trees on private property Pop-up rainbeds as test modules Cold storage yards as social meeting places with shade, water and neighbourhood programme Unsealing consultants from the neighbourhood itself Sponge city visible during heavy rain – monitoring and experience format

I'm an individual

Katharina Dräger

I/we are still looking for comrades-in-arms

neighborhood perimeter