Rain water utilization in urban design: A case study of the street natural drainage program in Seattle America

With rapid pace of urbanization, increasing roads and drainage facilities destroyed the natural hydrological cycle, which led to a series of urban water environment problems. Simultaneously, rainwater drainage through pipes wasted a large amount of rain water resources and caused river pollution. In order to solve the problems, this paper studied the case of the street natural drainage program in Seattle America, whose design technique and management measures are analyzed systematically. It is concluded that using the ecological design methods such as rain water utilization is significant to the urban sustainable development, and these theory and measures are useful to the contemporary urban design in china.