I always wonder what goes on in planners’ heads when they pave a plaza of 1000m² and then add 3 trees somewhere. As if that would disguise the urban desert they’ve created.

I think a lot of those rarely used driveways can be paved with those bricks that have the centre part out. Rainwater can go into the ground instead of the storm system.

Since January 2024, developers in Leuven have had to demonstrate that any rain that falls on new or significantly renovated homes can either be capture and re-used on-site or filtrate into the property’s garden rather than pool up and cause a flood. If developers can’t prove their designs are extreme rainfall-ready, they won’t be approved, says Vlaeminck.

More of this everywhere please. One of the landscaping outfits I used to work for had maintenance contracts with a number of private neighborhoods and retirement communities that were practically all blacktop or concrete. Sure, there would be some plants, but less than 50 square feet of each place would be for gardens or anything else that could sequester water. Absolute hellscapes that should have been required to be better designed to handle even normal precipitation events.