Sustainable Urban Drainage: Blue-green fingerprints in the city of Malmo
“The transition from a traditional urban drainage towards a more sustainable is a long process”. “To succeed you need an active support from the top managerial level in the city administration”
Peter Stahre´s much longed-for book “Blue-green fingerprints in the city of Malmö, Sweden” is now published! Peter Stahre is an international known expert in the field of “sustainable urban drainage”.
The book describes Malmö´s transition from a traditional urban drainage in buried pipes towards a sustainable urban drainage in open systems.
In the book 18 different sustainable urban drainage projects in Malmö are described. Over the 20 years period that the concept has been applied in Malmö the views on different technical solutions has gradually changed. Today multi-functional regional eco-corridors are in focus. One reason for the increasing interest for this in Malmö is that this type of facility has a bigger drainage capacity than traditional buried pipe systems and therefore can be one way of meeting the effects of a climate change.
Evolution of Sustainable Urban Drainage in Malmo, Sweden
“The concept of sustainable urban drainage was introduced in the city of Malmö already in the late 1980:ies. Over the two decades the new drainage concept has 
been applied in Malmö, the technique has gradually been developed and further refined. This applies both to the physical planning and to the preferences regarding the technical configuration,” writes Peter Stahre.
“The intention with this book is to describe Malmö’s transition from a traditional urban drainage in buried pipes towards a sustainable urban drainage in open systems. The transition that took 5–10 years was not problem-free. Many barriers and obstacles had to be overcome on the way. Most of these were of institutional nature. One important factor for a successful result was the trustful and prestige-less cooperation that gradually developed between the top management of the technical departments, especially between the managers of Malmö Water and the department of Parks and City environment.”
“The idea to compile this book came up during discussions I had in 2006 with my friend Tom Liptan, Portland OR. We both share the experiences that the way towards a sustainable urban drainage is not always so easy and that it often takes unexpectedly long time.
Posted March 2009