By Andrew Turco, Intern, RPA
On my daily walk to the subway, I pass street signs whose names weren't always so removed from the uses they serve today. Canal Street, Beach Street - their names originate from the water that used to spot, transverse, and border Manhattan's now concrete and geometrically sided island.
Before I left Phnom Penh in August after living and working in Cambodia's capital for a year, I had similar experiences, only in reverse. I was sitting on the bamboo roof of one of the backpacker restaurants around Boeung Kak Lake, in the heart of the city. As I watched the sun set in the humid air, I wondered if future residents and visitors would sit in that same spot thinking about what used to be there before apartment towers, shopping arcades, streets, and plazas dominated their view.
Like many cities, New York and Phnom Penh both sit among complex water systems that enabled their development. The Mekong, Tonle Sap, and Bassac Rivers influenced Phnom Penh's growth, just as New York Harbor shaped this city's. The fabric of Cambodia's capital today, however, is more similar to New York's of previous centuries: it's a city that still has room for yards, fields, and ponds between buildings. Despite these differences, both cities face a changing climate and must decide how this affects their development policies.
Phnom Penh becomes dusty and parched during the dry season, but it floods dramatically in the rainy season. During heavy downpours in the monsoon months, it's not unreasonable to have to put one's leg in calf-high water to balance a motorbike idling in heavy traffic.
Such routine flooding looks only to get worse as Phnom Penh rapidly urbanizes. As the city sprawls outward, an increasing number of the area's natural catchment basins that now handle flood waters - lakes, swamps, and ponds - are being filled to make way for rows of concrete shophouses. It's estimated that Phnom Penh's 3,800 acres of lakes in 1998 will become a mere 520 acres by 2010. In a country that only relatively recently embraced land ownership and where political stability has increased since the end of civil war in the late 1990's, real estate development is booming. Crumbling French colonial villas, mid-century New Khmer houses as well as the city's lakes and other natural features are being leveled to make way for large, generic structures ready to serve the city's growing population.
Whether this level of construction and redevelopment will continue remains to be seen, but for now, real estate forces have converged in a project to fill 90% of Boeung Kak Lake with a huge luxury housing, shopping and entertainment complex. Where it's now possible to paddle across a lake that dominates any map of Phnom Penh, the government has granted a 99-year lease to a private company to fill and develop the lake's 330 acres (the equivalent of Lower Manhattan up to the World Trade Center / City Hall Park). Not only will the project displace 3,000 to 4,200 families who currently live around the lake, making it the largest post-war eviction in Cambodia, but it will also affect the city's sense of place, the health of its residents, and the area's ability to deal with monsoon downpours.
Other cities in the region, like Hanoi, have taken a different path and embraced their lakes as urban features that give a sense of place and identity to neighborhoods. These spaces provide a little room to breathe away from the exhaust pipes of the Honda Super Cubs that choke Southeast Asia's streets. And, of course, they help to absorb stormwater and reduce flooding.
Phnom Penh has filled lakes before and should know, by now, the consequences of doing so. Ever since the French filled Beng Decho in the 1930's to make way for Central Market, the neighborhood floods during heavy rains. In recent years, the Japanese government has helped the city address its drainage problems by installing four underground reservoirs and four new water pumps, among other improvements. But Cambodia can't continue to depend on foreign aid to fund its water infrastructure if it continues to allow private developers to destroy its natural water-retaining ecosystems such as Boeung Kak Lake. Who will then pay for the needed drainage infrastructure in a country where one-third of the population lives on less than $1 a day?
Phnom Penh would do better tackling its flooding problems with some of the approaches that New York and other cities are beginning to adopt: approaches that harness natural ecosystems and use softer physical interventions. New York City's Million Trees initiative, for example, aims to filter air pollution and reduce urban heat-island effect simply by planting trees in our sidewalks. Our Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan advocates for cisterns and rooftop gardens in order to prevent some of the 27,000-gallons-of-water-for-every-inch-of-falling-rain from flowing into our overwhelmed sewer system.
In a world of rising tides and intensifying storms, places as diverse as New York and Phnom Penh will have to address the challenges of managing water. Doing so with respect and in cooperation with the natural environment offers the best way for greater quality of life for a city's residents and for a more sustainable, prosperous future.
On my daily walk to the subway, I pass street signs whose names weren't always so removed from the uses they serve today. Canal Street, Beach Street - their names originate from the water that used to spot, transverse, and border Manhattan's now concrete and geometrically sided island.
Before I left Phnom Penh in August after living and working in Cambodia's capital for a year, I had similar experiences, only in reverse. I was sitting on the bamboo roof of one of the backpacker restaurants around Boeung Kak Lake, in the heart of the city. As I watched the sun set in the humid air, I wondered if future residents and visitors would sit in that same spot thinking about what used to be there before apartment towers, shopping arcades, streets, and plazas dominated their view.
Like many cities, New York and Phnom Penh both sit among complex water systems that enabled their development. The Mekong, Tonle Sap, and Bassac Rivers influenced Phnom Penh's growth, just as New York Harbor shaped this city's. The fabric of Cambodia's capital today, however, is more similar to New York's of previous centuries: it's a city that still has room for yards, fields, and ponds between buildings. Despite these differences, both cities face a changing climate and must decide how this affects their development policies.
Phnom Penh becomes dusty and parched during the dry season, but it floods dramatically in the rainy season. During heavy downpours in the monsoon months, it's not unreasonable to have to put one's leg in calf-high water to balance a motorbike idling in heavy traffic.
Such routine flooding looks only to get worse as Phnom Penh rapidly urbanizes. As the city sprawls outward, an increasing number of the area's natural catchment basins that now handle flood waters - lakes, swamps, and ponds - are being filled to make way for rows of concrete shophouses. It's estimated that Phnom Penh's 3,800 acres of lakes in 1998 will become a mere 520 acres by 2010. In a country that only relatively recently embraced land ownership and where political stability has increased since the end of civil war in the late 1990's, real estate development is booming. Crumbling French colonial villas, mid-century New Khmer houses as well as the city's lakes and other natural features are being leveled to make way for large, generic structures ready to serve the city's growing population.
Whether this level of construction and redevelopment will continue remains to be seen, but for now, real estate forces have converged in a project to fill 90% of Boeung Kak Lake with a huge luxury housing, shopping and entertainment complex. Where it's now possible to paddle across a lake that dominates any map of Phnom Penh, the government has granted a 99-year lease to a private company to fill and develop the lake's 330 acres (the equivalent of Lower Manhattan up to the World Trade Center / City Hall Park). Not only will the project displace 3,000 to 4,200 families who currently live around the lake, making it the largest post-war eviction in Cambodia, but it will also affect the city's sense of place, the health of its residents, and the area's ability to deal with monsoon downpours.
Other cities in the region, like Hanoi, have taken a different path and embraced their lakes as urban features that give a sense of place and identity to neighborhoods. These spaces provide a little room to breathe away from the exhaust pipes of the Honda Super Cubs that choke Southeast Asia's streets. And, of course, they help to absorb stormwater and reduce flooding.
Phnom Penh has filled lakes before and should know, by now, the consequences of doing so. Ever since the French filled Beng Decho in the 1930's to make way for Central Market, the neighborhood floods during heavy rains. In recent years, the Japanese government has helped the city address its drainage problems by installing four underground reservoirs and four new water pumps, among other improvements. But Cambodia can't continue to depend on foreign aid to fund its water infrastructure if it continues to allow private developers to destroy its natural water-retaining ecosystems such as Boeung Kak Lake. Who will then pay for the needed drainage infrastructure in a country where one-third of the population lives on less than $1 a day?
Phnom Penh would do better tackling its flooding problems with some of the approaches that New York and other cities are beginning to adopt: approaches that harness natural ecosystems and use softer physical interventions. New York City's Million Trees initiative, for example, aims to filter air pollution and reduce urban heat-island effect simply by planting trees in our sidewalks. Our Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan advocates for cisterns and rooftop gardens in order to prevent some of the 27,000-gallons-of-water-for-every-inch-of-falling-rain from flowing into our overwhelmed sewer system.
In a world of rising tides and intensifying storms, places as diverse as New York and Phnom Penh will have to address the challenges of managing water. Doing so with respect and in cooperation with the natural environment offers the best way for greater quality of life for a city's residents and for a more sustainable, prosperous future.
@RegionalPlan