"Could cities actually be designed to improve the environment? Bangkok, Thailand, landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, a TED Fellow, thinks so. Her imaginative work challenges the prevailing thinking that urbanization has to have a negative impact on the planet, whether it’s in the form of flooding due to paved surfaces, excessive energy use, disrupted biodiversity or the heat island effect.
With her firm Landprocess, Voraakhom has designed a new green roof on the Rangsit campus of Thammasat University, about 25 miles north of central Bangkok. Bangkok is extremely vulnerable to catastrophic flooding — in fact, according to the World Bank, nearly 40 percent of the city, which is built on a river delta, may flood annually by 2030, and this situation has been greatly exacerbated by paved-over earth and intensifying rainy seasons."
