Protecting homes from flooding is no time for wild imaginings about happy homes, where people walk or use bikes, and let the flood water come in around them and say 'oh how nice'. But these are among proposals coming for Norwich. 'Rain Square' in Norwich is a proposed development of housing, using 'using wetlands, reed beds, drainage channels and porous driveways' to allow develoment of housing in flood plains. The first rule of disaster prevention is don't build near disaster prone areas. The proposals have recieved a lot of complaints from the local planning authorities who called it 'folly'. However, all the above schemes, (reed beds, wetlands and porous driveways) are all good ideas in their own right. Director of Baca architects, a flood architectural specialist, says that 'We are saying let water in rather than letting it flood properties further downstream'. Planning to build on flood plains or areas prone to flooding shouldn't go ahead, simply because we don't know yet the extent to which flooding in the UK will get worse. There maybe other factors, such as severity and frequency and there maybe areas that haven't flooded before that will in the future. What seems to be folly is allowing developers to offer home buyers housing in flood prone areas in the first place.
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