Lisbon’s Metropolitan Public Space Network as an opportunity for the management of the urban water cycle.

Abstract: Stormwater management has been essentially controlled by specific technical and specialized disciplines that have authoritatively decided upon the necessary actions. An example of this is the recent Drainage Master Plan for the city of Lisbon, which mostly relies on the creation and optimization of singular, mono-functional, hard-engineering infrastructure that is uniquely focused on draining potentially valuable stormwater away from the urban area. The need to revisit contemporary practices regarding the management of pluvial waters is widely established in literature (Gersonius et al., 2013, Hartmann and Driessen, 2013), not only when considering climate change projections, and the associated exacerbation of precipitation extremes and consequent urban flooding, but also when acknowledging pluvial water as the ultimate resource for urban resilience. Faced with this challenge, numerous cities have been maturing their relationship with water through flood adaptation projects that explore water’s bountiful regenerative and ecological capacities (Matos Silva, 2020). In these projects, one can further note an attempt for a coherent elasticity and connection among similar strategies in different scales. Indeed, all flood adaptation measures are more effective and provide a broader benefit if articulated and interconnected with each other at different scales. In the research project “MetroPublicNet” (Santos et al., 2020) public space qualification projects in Lisbon Metropolitan Area since 1998 are identified and their rationales are critically revised in light of a future metropolitan public space network. Bearing in mind lessons from three specific cities (namely Rotterdam, New York, and London) regarding their relationships between existing flood adaptation strategies and metropolitan networks related to public space, this research aims to initiate the discussion on a new Metropolitan Flood Management Plan for Lisbon.Through this research, the importance of an effective interconnection between scales lies reinforced. By integrating a flood adaptation plan that is served and serves a Metropolitan Public Space Network, new urban interventions can more effectively contribute to more resilient, robust and adaptative territories.

Keywords: public space, urban flooding, urban water cycle

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1002369

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