Fly through our vision for the Jiangsu–Victoria Sponge City Innovation Park

The first sod on the Jiangsu–Victoria Sponge City Innovation Park was turned in the City of Kunshan (in China) on 10 April 2018. The Hon. Richard Wynne MP (Victorian Government Minister for Planning) and Tony Wong (CEO for the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities) joined other dignitaries from China and Victoria for the event.

The Innovation Park is a 10 hectare site that will exhibit cutting edge water sensitive infrastructure and technology, with facilities for validating emerging sponge city technologies and products. The CRC for Water Sensitive Cities and our partners will lead the park’s development and master planning, and undertake infrastructure, landscape and building concept designs that will showcase CRCWSC innovation at both building and public open space scale.

See what we’ve got planned for the park in our flythrough video. These are some of the innovative features:

• The recirculation wetland manages water quality and keeps water moving in the adjoining polder canal.
• The riparian ecotone establishes the exemplar template of how a riparian zone can be restored. It shows the diversity of ecological transition from aquatic, deep marsh and shallow marsh to terrestrial plants.
• The central median biofilter shows how the streetscape will capture road runoff for stormwater attenuation and pollution reduction.
• The nutrient recovery glass house will produce nursery plants irrigated using nutrient-rich recycled water from the wastewater treatment facility.
• The structure soil tree pit will provide sufficient quality soil volume for healthy tree roots and growth in an urban environment, as well as treat stormwater.
• The swamp forest wetland will add a vertical dimension to the traditional stormwater wetland and provide visual screening for the overhead power lines.
• Together, the sub-surface wetland and surface wetland will form an ecological landscape around the administration building precinct. It will also help to clean up the canal, which e black and odour problems.

The park is supported by Liveability Victoria International (within the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) and Trade Victoria. We’ll keep you updated about progress as construction continues at the site.