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Comment by cmpb | Hacker News Reader

>Houston is trying to adapt. ... developers are now required to practice a kind of “leave no trace” policy when it comes to rainfall—once ... as a result, alongside Houston’s ubiquitous parking lots, many new projects feature grassy flood pits.

There's a strong case to be made here for more community parks & woodland trails. They serve as extremely good water containment areas

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A comedic part about Houston flooding is that at least one large suburb on the west side was built within an overflow reservoir. The neighborhood is literally a water containment area.

Which one is that?

Canyon Gate, among others, in Barker Reservoir's flood zone. Typically excellent interactive NY Times article on it here https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/22/us/houston-ha...

Thanks! I hadn't seen that before.

That's alarmingly common. It only takes one idiotic or corrupt planning team to flip decades of sensible flood planning. All this land set aside gets built on and everyone acts surprised when it's foot-deep in raw sewage.

Happens frequently in the UK. Too many fingers at every level of government happy to take a "donation" from a developer.

This is great if its designed in from day 1 but to retrofit into existing places with small fragmented sites and ownership is impossible - it would require considerable compulsory acquisition of land.

A lot of subdivisions here build around these as green spaces. They have jogging trails, planted trees, and some of em they also stock and you can fish within your neighborhood. It’s pretty neat.

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