科研之友
微信
新浪微博
Facebook
分享链接
摘要
This article puts forward a historical and epistemological analysis of the idea that urban hydrology requires a "new paradigm". Through a study of various visions of this new paradigm [Todd and Todd, 1993; Narcy, 2004; Novotny and Brown, 2007; Andrieu et al., 2010; Chocat, 2013], I outline three elements that seem relatively consensual: biomimicry, eco-phenomenology, and integrated management. Biomimicry enables us to think about how we can imitate or take inspiration from the hydrological flows of natural ecosystems. Eco-phenomenology - a philosophical approach rarely advocated explicitly by urban hydrologists - draws attention to the phenomenological manifestation of water in the city: daylighting urban streams and rivers, surface storage, local purification, pedagogical measures, etc. And integrated management makes it possible to manage the various moments of the urban hydrological cycle in a concerted manner, integrating bottom-up initiatives and lateral cooperation between the various actors and stakeholders of the urban water cycle. The guiding thread that holds these three elements together in a coherent epistemic framework is the following argument: the current paradigm remains beholden to the organicist imaginary of the city that accompanied the conception of the first hydraulic networks of the nineteenth century [Chocat, 1997; Narcy, 2004; Illich, 2005; Bertrand-Krajewski, 2006; Picon, 2014]; however, as a result of the ecological problems that this imaginary entails, the current paradigm has entered a period of crisis and a new imaginary - and thus also a new paradigm - is in the process of taking its place: the biomimetic idea of imagining the city like an ecosystem [Newman and Jennings, 2008; Schuiten, 2009; Despommier, 2011] and more specifically "like a forest" [Braungart and McDonough, 2009, p. 139]. From this perspective, the imaginary of the "urban organism" [Harrouel 1977] may be described as what the French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur [1975], calls a "dead metaphor": a metaphor that continues to structure our thoughts and deeds but which we no longer recognize as a metaphor. What is instead required, then, is what Ricoeur calls a "living metaphor" - the metaphor of the city as a forest - capable of stimulating the imagination and integrating activity in such a way that a "new paradigm" for the city - and thus also for urban hydrology - may finally emerge.
- 出版日期2015-10
