Housing, Flooding, And Risk-ecology: Thames Estuary South-shoreland And North Kent

摘要

A review, with table, of statements of housing need and historical incidence of sea flooding in the Thames Estuary south-shoreland and north Kent, where past and current programs for flood protection and housing development are explored, show these two activities running in parallel but not yet integrated. Professed sustainability cannot be achieved without an understanding of ecological development with increased evidence of "living with flooding." Land adjacent to the river is currently preferred as offering the most attractive sites at highest land cost, the river being acknowledged as a landscape feature but not as a potential hazard. The thousands of new and existing dwellings that are, or will be, vulnerable to flooding, due either to overtopping of flood defenses, or their failure or absence, are receiving little attention as a design issue. Elementary and regulatory planning methods appear rigidly focused on outdated issues of visual concern in which height restrictions prevent sensible upward domestic expansion. Ways for people to successfully "house" themselves in hazardous environments, inclusive of foreshores and wetlands, would offer an inclusively responsive and visually observable physical statement of successful development in an ecology of risk.