Freshwater in cities

• Cities have evolved to live with large populations rather than being designed to cope
• Stormwater in Ottawa has been debated to hold biodiversity or not - many cities thought to be 'urban deserts'
• Stormwater found to have a lot of overlap with natural water and there is no significant difference between them in terms of biodiversity
• conservation of existing function - dont try to fix things when they are not broken
• demand-side management - how to limit the use of water independent to its supply
• infrastructure investment - how to turn cities into diverse areas, richer countries can invest in this whereas poorer ones will suffer from high water stress
• China has sponge cities that create a more resilient landscape by increasing forests, lakes, wetlands and rainwater gardens to improve land permeability